
Class 



Book I t j 
CopyrightN? 



COPYRrGHT DEPOSnV 



-in i 11 ii i nr 



SIX AND ONE 
ABROAD 



BY 

SIDNEY J. THOMAS 

AUTHOR OF 

"In-a-Sense Abroad," Etc. 



Printed by E. L. Steck 
19 14 



in i I I ii i nc 






COPYRIGHT 

19 14 

BY MRS. S. J. THOMAS 



JAN 12 1914 




'CI,A361562 



DEDICATED 

TO 

MY WIFE AND TWO SONS 



CHAPTER. 

I. 

II. 

III. 

IV. 

V. 

VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 

XI. 

XII. 

XIII. 

XIV. 

XV. 

XVI. 

XVII. 

XVIII. 

XIX. 

XX. 

XXI. 

XXII. 

XXIII. 

XXIV. 

XXV. 

XXVI. 

XXVII. 

XXVIII. 

XXIX. 

XXX. 

XXXI. 

XXXII. 

XXXIII. 

XXXIV. 

XXXV. 

XXXVI. 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 

The Sea and Its Moods 1 

First Sight of Land 9 

In Southern Spain 20 

Gibraltar and Algiers 30 

A Semi-Colon in the Journey 39 

Athens — Its Ruins -^9 

Some Dis-stink-tive Features of Constantinople 61 

St. Sophia, the Bazars, and the Bosphorus 69 

Two Rainy Days in Damascus 77 

Lake Galilee and the City of Nazareth 89 

From Joppa to Jerusalem 102 

A Jerusalem Hotel 108 

Bethlehem and the Manger HI 

Inside the Walls of Jerusalem 119 

The AVilderness of Judea, the Dead Sea and 

the Jordan 131 

Queer Egyptian Customs l-l-l 

The World 's Greatest Wonder 156 

Street Life of Naples 166 

Pompeii 1 ' 

24:8 Kilometers to Rome 179 

St. Peter's and the Vatican 187 

The Tragedy of the Catacombs 195 

The Colosseum by Moonlight 211 

Guides Eliminated 219 

Venice — Its Amphibious Life 221 

Queen of the World's Marbles 235 

Threading the Alps 238 

Some Hotel Difficulties 242 

Lucerne and Its Environs 245 

A Boat Ride on the Rhine 249 

The Cathedral of Cologne 257 

Windmills and Petticoats 259 

Seeing a Dutch City Before Breakfast 265 

^Moving Pictures 269 

Swallowed by Paris at Midnight 278 

The Cream of Parisians 279 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

The Sea Chapter I 

Three of Our Party — The Connoisseur with 

Hand on Hand Rail Chapter I 

Funehal, Madeira Chapter II. 

The First Sight of Land Chapter II. 

Coasting at Funehal Chapter II. 

A Madeira Cab Chapter II. 

A Tandem Team in Cadiz Chapter III. 

Our Train from Cadiz to Seville Chapter III. 

Chapel of Skeletons Chapter V. 

The Parthenon Chapter VI. 

The Pillars of the Parthenon Chapter VI. 

The Stadion of Athens Chapter VI. 

Theater of Dionysus Chapter VI. 

My Passport Into Turkey Chapter VII. 

Express System of Constantinople Chapter VII. 

Entrance to the Bazars of Constantinople Chapter VIII. 

Mohammedan Women Chapter VIII. 

The ''Street Called Straight" Chapter IX. 

Malchizedek Chapter IX. 

Lake Galilee and Tiberias Chapter X. 

Ploughing Near Nazareth Chapter X. 

Water Jugs, Nazareth Chapter X. 

Goat Skin Vessels Chapter XI. 

In the Garden of Notre Dame — The Nine Priests 

and Others Chapter XII. 

In a Sheik's Costume in a Jerusalem Photo Gal- 
lery Chapter XIII. 

The Manger Chapter XIII. 

Tomb of Rachel — Bethlehem in the Distance Chapter XIII. 

Jehosaphat Chapter XIII. 

Birdseye View of Jerusalem Chapter XIV. 

Lepers, Jerusalem Chapter XIV. 

Bethany Chapter XV. 

Going Up from Jerusalem to Jericho — Notice the 

Fine Road and Dearth of Trees Chapter XV. 



Illustrations. 

The Dead Sea Chapter XV. 

The River Jordan Chapter XV. 

A Street in Old Cairo... Chapter XVI. 

An Alfalfa Transport Coming Into Cairo Chapter XVII. 

Cast of a Man — ^Pompeii Chapter XIX. 

Cast of a Dog — Pompeii Chapter XIX. 

St. Peters... Chapter XXI. 

A Berth in the Catacombs of Rome Chapter XXII. 

A Street in the Catacombs of Rome Chapter XXII. 

Pyramids of Cestius Chapter XXII. 

The Colosseum Chapter XXIII. 

Interior of Colosseum Chapter XXIII. 

Bridge of Sighs Chapter XXV. 

Cathedral of Milan Chapter XXVI. 

The Lion of Lucerne Chapter XXIX. 

Chapel Bridge — Lucerne Chapter XXIX. 



INTRODUCTION. 

It is hard to condense the events of a twenty-thousand-mile 
trip into a single volume of travel stories, and yet, whether 
wisely or not, I have overcome the difficulties of such a task. 
It is still harder to avoid the well-worn track of travel writers 
and to discover and present for the reader's table an appetizing 
diet of something new in that line. I hope I have not been un- 
successful in accomplishing that purpose. 

The itinerary of the journej^ described in these sketches in- 
cluded interesting stops at various points on both sides of the 
Mediterranean, a sojourn in the Holy Land, and in Egypt, and, 
after doubling back to Naples, a visit to half the countries on 
the Continent of Europe. Some of the journey was rather 
hurried, notably so the swift swing we took north out of Switzer- 
land, by way of the Rhine, through AVestern Germany, Holland, 
and back to our first latitude at Paris. It was accidental, this 
excursion into the Netherlands, and therefore just that much 
surplus, for our program did not originally include it. 

It so happened that my lot was cast, quite providentially I 
suspect, with a party of Christian ministers who had planned 
their trip to the Old World by agreement together before their 
departure, and to that fortuitous circumstance is due the re- 
ligious if not strictly Biblical and orthodox viewpoint from 
which this book is written in certain of its parts. I was trav- 
eling alone except for such companionship as I should chance 
to form and with no particular plans and routes of travel, at 
any rate with none that were not subject to change to meet the 
almost dire necessity for companions on such a long trip in 
unknown lands. 

I was glad therefore to be invited to join the preachers' 
party, though their programme specified rather hurried 
journeys and short stops and economical husbandry of limited 
funds, in which, unless the hurried jaunts were objectionable, 
I easily enough concurred. The confederation was formed in 
mid-ocean and was composed according to the preachers' own 
designation of the mixture, of six preachers and one gentleman. 



Introd'uetion. 

Let me denote them more particularly : Dr. Stoplilet, a digni- 
fied Indiana divine, possessing a disposition as smooth as a 
February sea ; Dr. Lubbock, a Chicago pastor, encyclopaedic in 
matters of history and particularly well posted on all events 
applying to the ready-made route of our itinerary; Dr. Weld, 
of Minneapolis, a recent Princeton graduate whose journal — 
his fetich — was forever shocked by Texas levity; Dr. MattheAVS, 
of South Forks, Dakota, whose orthodoxy was without a flaw ; 
Dr. Haines, of New York, whose Presbyterian scruples were in- 
laid with g:ood cheer and who was himself as free of acerbity as 
his head was of hairs; Dr. Rawlings, of Danville, Virginia, now 
of Nashville, our spokesman because of his ready wit and ringing 
eloquence when called upon, especially at those functions aboard- 
ship that we had, notably on Lincoln's birthday. And I in- 
clude also in our company that genial spirit from Pittsburg, 
Col. McCurdy, who, though with us but a short while, con- 
tributed immensely to the general fund of enjoyment. 

The book is an album of travel-stories. Just my own pencil 
pictures. If they interest the reader I shall be very glad. If 
they prove to be helpful to him, ever so little, I shall be repaid 
for the trouble of their reproduction. 

Many of the illustrations are snap-shots of my own. From 
New York to Egypt I kept up a steady and unrelenting fire, 
until I exhausted every film which I had. 

S. J. T. 



CHAPTER I. 

The Sea and its Moods. 

The most interesting feature of a trip across the ocean is the 
ocean itself; its monotony and its beauty when it sleeps under 
a glittering sheen from horizon to horizon ; its violent demeanor 
when aroused by the winds from its radiant stupor ; the de- 
lightfulness of the ride upon its gentle swells, when the swells 
are gentle ; and the terrors of its fury in a storm ; its overwhelm- 
ing magnitude and boundlessness, and the resultant impression 
of helplessness that falls with crushing effect upon a traveler, 
and of his own inconsequential relation to the great scheme of 
the universe of which the sea, vast as it is and puis«ant as it is, 
he knows is but a small factor. 

On land or sea, personal conceit has little chance to survive 
the experiences of an observant traveler. With the varieties 
of races and tongues with which he comes in contact, the multi- 
tudes of people of diverse traits and customs, the absolute 
ignorance of the world of mankind of any certain single indi- 
vidual such as you or me, and therefore its positive indiffer- 
ence toward either of us; the sea — illimitable, unexplored, all- 
powerful ; the skies, just as vast, and vaster under contempla- 
tion, with their peopled worlds greater than ours and its uni- 
verses unnumbered ; what chance has the Ego to assert its little 
potentiality. 

Personally, I do not care for the sea, and I wonder what 
could have been the Almighty purpose in wasting three-fourths 
of the surface of the Globe by covering it with water. AVhen it 
is calm and smooth, it is monotonous and tiresome even if it be 
beautiful. When it is turbulent, even when "choppy," as the 
sailors say, it is aggravating and — nauseating. 

The first two days out from New York, on this particular 
voyage, the sea was comparatively smooth and the skies alter- 
nately clear and clouded. But during the night of the second 
day a fierce gale arose, of such intensity that it was epochal, 
both because of its own vehement turbulance and of certain 



Six and One Abroad 



drastic, ga?tric, consequences it entailed. For forty-eight hours 
there was a violent churning of our vessel and of everything in 
it and of our own anatomies and of everything in them. 

To be seasick is to be superlatively unhappy. Beginning in 
a sensation of teasing torture this crudest of all maladies car- 
ries its victim by rapid stages to the very ragged edge of de- 
spair where hope with poised wing all but takes its everlasting 
flight. It is a rebellion of every element of the anatomy amid- 




THE SEA. 

ships; a tangled agony of aches, a rumbling of threatenings 
within and a maudlin wretchedness of eruption without, with 
no remedy but endurance and no palliative but the grave. 

There is no caste so haughty and disdainful as the caste of 
the seasick and that of the upper stratum of the immune. These 
latter, as vain as peacocks, strut among the disconsolate 
wretches who are do^^^Ti and out, and parade their immunity, 
and out of the anarchy of his desperation the lower caste vic- 
tim longs, oh, so earnestly longs for a gun, a great gun from the 



The Sen and Its Moods S 

deck of a battleship, that he might train it on one of the upper 
caste imnnmes and l)lo\v him into fragments — not just mutilate 
him, but tear him into atoms, wriggling, agonizing, miserable 
myriads of atoms. In an early stage of my own convalescence, 
it happened during a stroll on the deck one day that I came 
upon a lady whom I knew casually as one of a company of 
courtly Carolinians. Reclining in a steamer chair and swathed 
insufficiently in a steamer shawl, hair fearfully disheveled, rib- 
bons disarranged and negligence apparent in her apparel from 
loosened bodice to untied shoes, pale unto death, this lady was 
a perfect picture of abject misery and despair. And, more- 
over, her head rested upon the shoulder of a man who was as 
ghastly as she. 

I should have known better, for I knew from drastic expe- 
rience that at that stage of the malady the patient wanted 
nothing but elimination, eradication, annihilation. Still it was 
not offensively intended when I asked the lady if 1 might be 
of some service to her, and to her husband, the melancholy gen- 
tleman who sustained her in unconscious agony. The purple 
lips parted, the eyes opened weakly, overcast with ochre, and 
with all the scornful emphasis she could hurl into her words, 
she replied: "That man is not my husband; I don't know 
whose husband he is and what is more, I do not care!" 

Desperation ; contempt ; unspeakable misery. 

It was nothing short of a calamity to be in the clutches of an 
epidemic, even in convalescence, during the prevalence of a 
storm at sea, and unable to properly appreciate the grandeur 
of the cataclysm of wind and wave. Overhead the gray canopy 
of cloud and mist Avas in a state of violent convulsion; beneath 
and all around, the tumultuous jargon of the clashing devils 
of the sea ; and everywhere the shrieking furies of the tempest. 
Great Titans of water, colored a deep indigo with- the venom 
of their own madness, rose and clashed and fell, and over the 
places where the duels were fought, the residue of their wrath 
was resolved into seething troughs of foam. Farther out, the 
scene was like unto the rise and fall of mountains, ten thousand 
ominous cones rising high out of the maddened main, their 
crests exploding in a fury of foam, and dying as others rose in 



Six and One Abroad 



their turbulent graves. While, throughout the fierce conflict 
our noble vessel maintained her course serenely, trundled some- 
times in the cradle of waves as high as her lofty masts, coasting 
sometimes the crystal declivities or plunging the lance of her 
bow into the vitals of a billow — not a halt in the long fretted 
furrow she was cutting from America to the African coast, and 
drawing majestically in her wake a train of blue overlaid with 
fantastic laces of foam. 

The sea can be just as. well-behaved as it can be obstreperous ; 




THREE OF OUR PARTY— THE CONNOISSEUR WITH HAND ON 
HAND RAIL. 



when it is good it is very, very good, and when it is bad, it is 
horrid. It has its moods like a great uneasy thing of life, at 
times ugly and dangerous, at times conspiring with sun and 
atmospheric conditions toward a sublime climax of beauty. In 
fair weather, in that delightful interim between the breaking 
of dawn and sunrise, before the mermaid — the sea girls for 
whom, we looked and looked and never so much as got a glimpse 
of one — have tinted their tresses in the colors of the new day 



The Sea and Its Moods 



and are combing them into exquisite curls and lustrous undula- 
tions; when the stars, one by one, put out their lights, and the 
sky begins to blush at the coming of its. chief, the gray of the 
dawn changing imperceptibly to violet, and quickly thence into 
purple, and to a radiant orange, and to crimson, and crimson 
into gold, which is the livery of the rising orb ; at such a time — 
the very beginning of the day — it is inexpressibly delightful 
to stand on the swaying prow of the steamer, its sharp edge 
opening a way through the trackless crystal and turning a foam- 
ing furrow, the great ship rising and falling with the breathing 
of the waves; and at such a vantage point to expand the lungs 
with deep draughts of the finest tonic ever brewed in the dis- 
pensaries of God or man ; and to watch the changing colors of 
the morning; and to wait for the coming of the sun when he 
shall appear at the spot on the horizon where the colors are 
deepest, and send his smiles on tripping feet along a glistening 
perspective like angels on the ladder of a Jacob's dream. 

Hardly less entrancing is the view at the close of a faultless 
day. Then, the disc of the sun grows to immoderate dimensions 
before he retires, and the same long glistening ladder of light 
as that of the early morning is alive with messages of adieu. If a 
retinue of clouds chance to attend the closing exercises the ef- 
fect is the more delightful by reason of their flaming livery — 
vestments of crimson and gold in which they lie against the 
gates of night. 

When we left New York, snow was twenty inches deep in the 
streets and a full grown and well matured blizzard was stabbi. g 
right and left with daggers of ice. Within 60 hours we were 
basking in temperate winds and under ardent skies. Yet we 
had not gone more than a hundred miles below New York's 
latitude. The source of the change was that amorous, hot- 
blooded child of the Mexican sea, which runs away from home 
and hurries, steaming, across the Atlantic, diffusing its warmth, 
but declining to mix with the water through which it makes its 
way. 

We could easily feel the difference, the delightful change, as 
it came on gradually, until one day we plumped right into the 
current and its steaming vapors rose in our faces. 



6 Six and One Abroad 

To the north of this stream and out of the range of its influ- 
ence, the winters indulge in their severest moods. South of it 
and to the east, the favored nations smile under its balmy breath. 
North of it, there are icebergs and vi^hales and polar bears and 
dangerous fogs ; south, there is perpetual spring and summer 
and laziness and flying fish. And that reminds me. We 
w^ere disappointed in not seeing a single fl^dng fish. But 
in our meanderings, we flushed, one quiet, unclouded day, a 
queer specimen of marine fauna that was new to every one on 
board except the captain and crew. It did not rise and fly 
away at our approach as the flying fish would have done, nor 
with tail for propelling screw and fins for a rudder did it skee- 
daddle through the water, but on the surface of its natural 
element inflated itself with gas of its own generation until it 
was swollen up to a number of times its normal size — round as 
a circus balloon and colored all the tints of a soap bubble — it 
then committed itself to the winds and floated away. 

The course of this strange fish or whatever it was, was di- 
rectly in front of us, rising and falling as if an experienced 
hand were on the throttle of its movements. Presently it 
dropped slowly to the surface and by some sort of automatic 
puncturing device subsided into invisibility. This phenomenal 
little creature is known to the sailors as the "balloon fish." 

And whales, too — we had a fine company of them for our 
guests on Sunday afternoon, an occasion never to be forgotten. 
The keen eye of a mate made tine momentous discovery — momen- 
tous to us but ordinary to him, as was evident in his manner 
in pointing it out with a careless remark. All alert, I followed 
the direction of the pointing finger, but for the life of me I 
could not see the whale nor anything that might be construed 
into such a phenomenon. The trouble was, as afterwards de- 
veloped, I expected too much ; expected to see a column of water 
as large as an eruption of Vesuvius issuing from the forward 
end of a black, writhing, tremendous thing of life that cleaved 
the water into a frightful state of agitation, or lay flat, his 
whole length upon the glistening swells, a dangerous monster at 
rest. That was my idea of whales, and to save my life I could 
see nothing in the quiet prospect before us to justify the con- 



The Se:t and Its Moods 



elusion that we were in the vicinity of the big fish. At length, 
I took the trouble to carefully follow the index finger of the 
mate until it struck water away out some five miles, and be- 
hold, a little puff, as though some hunter had descried the big 
game first and discharged his gun at it. That little puff 
of spray was the nasal discharge of a whale, the mate said, but 
if it were indeed the output of a whale, the author of the spray 
kept provokingly out of sight. However, while we looked, 
another bit of spray shot up, in the intervening stretch of 
water, and disappeared, and another still nearer, and still an- 
other, another, sakes alive! and another right here at us and 
others here, there and yonder, the last one of them shooting his 
noiseless gun and the whole bunch presenting the appearance 
of pickets firing at random on the approach of danger. 

The interest in the plot was increasing fast ; things were hap- 
pening ; we had accidentally run into a school of the biggest 
game pf the ocean. Presently we were in their very midst, and 
I counted as many as thirty-two playing about our bow and 
stern. They were racing and chasing and threading the gentle 
swells like huge darning needles, but the provoking things would 
never come up on top and lie there full length till we could take 
their measure. Now a head would appear — a big awkward 
ellipse of shapeless black, slit with an enormous mouth like a 
Mississippi negro's — and then disappear, to be followed a sec- 
ond later by the tail, which rose a few feet while the forward 
end went fishing, or else barely came into view on the sur- 
face. A dozen pistols were fired at the visitors, and while it is 
unlikely that any took effect, it served to break up the recep- 
tion, and the whole party ran on ahead of us and out of sight, 
each leaking at the nose like a broken water pipe. 



Six and One Abroad 




CHAPTER II. 

First Si gilt of Land. 

The sight of land, after being out on the ocean waste for days, 
is calculated to excite interest in the most hlase traveler, but 
the novice on his first sea legs is delighted beyond measure — 
any land, so it be but a break in the monotony, the eternal 
monotony, of water, water, water. 

I happened to be up and walking the deck at dawn of the 
day that was to put a parenthesis of delight in the long, tedious 
sentence of our journey. A blue black washpot lay overturned 
upon the horizon. As we watched, slowly the outlines grew and 
slowly our expectations rose, till the dull surface began to take 
on tints and undulations ; till the physical topography of a fair 
and charming island lay outspread before us ; till from myste- 
rious tropic groves a perfume as sweet as the breath of Para- 
dise came to us on the tenders of the wind with a gracious and 
refreshing welcome. 

Higher and higher climbed the pleasing vision; eagerly and 
more eagerly we swept it with the eye. Gradually the curves 
of the rotund top were broken into sharp outlines of peaks, and 
the broun colors we had seen became their precipitous sides up- 
rearing from the water, and the green was the luxuriant vegeta- 
tion that thrived in their ravines. Then strips of white ap- 
peared and confused us until the wiser heads pronounced them 
waterfalls, that dropped like loosened bands of ribbon from 
sky to sea. 

Bye and bye the scene was dotted with spots of white and oc- 
casionally with broader splotches of white, which upon a nearer 
view were resolved into individual homes and little towns. And 
rectangles of different shades of green, little geometric figures, 
so even and regular, lined the mountain sides. Some one ven- 
tured the opinion that they were vineyards, but they looked 
more like multi-colored stair steps. 

As we ran alongside this stranger of the sea for thirty miles 
a panorama of beauty was unrolled such as is rarely seen on 



10 



Six and One Abroad 



highways of water. I do not believe it possible for f ny sight to 
be more nearly Edenic — mountains rising four thousand feet 
sheer from the waves that lazily lapped their feet ; covered from 
base to summit with foliage of every variety of restful green; 
riven with picturesque gorges whose depths were concealed un- 
der a riot of tangled vines ; cascades leaping down every de- 
pression and dropping their substance in a splashing spray of 
pearls at the edge of the sea. It was not long before we could 




THE FIRST SIGHT OF LAND. 



see the baby vineyards as they lay like so many thousands of 
cots, one above the other in methodical order, so little that one 
might easily step over them, it seemed, and yet hanging 
so precariously against the mountain's steep side, that should 
one of the terraces cave the least bit there would be danger of 
annihilating the whole grape crop of Madeira. 

Immediately after dropping anchor the water was alive with 
bobbing skiffs and naked brown bo.ys in them pleading with 
gestures and noisy cries for a chance to dive for coins. Not 



First Sifjht of Land 11 

once, I think, did one of these boys fail, after following with 
careful eyes the course of a falling coin, to leap on its trail 
into the water with sprawling limbs and wide open eyes, and re- 
appear shortly with the trophy in his fingers upheld in tri- 
umph, tossing it ({uiekly thereafter in the bottom of the boat, 
wiping his eyes hurriedly and renewing his appeals for further 
trials. 

From the steamer, a couple of miles from shore, the white 
capital, Funchal, appeared as beautiful as a dream of a city 
in Fairyland, a cluster of diamonds glittering low on the 
emerald front of an apparition uprisen from the sea. And 
when we were landed by tenders on the primitive dock amidst 
a swarm of brown and scantily, yet plentifully, clad natives, 
underneath palms that never knew a frigid v^ind and among 
flowers that extended a welcome of decoration and fragrance, 
the secret of its charms was revealed. Tropical luxuriance of 
vegetation and prodigality of colore. Indolence, somnolence, 
apathy. Quaint aboriginal customs. Houses of wdiite and 
roofs of red, and natives in wdiite and red. AVhat a change and 
how sudden — from New York to Madeira, from civilization's 
front door to its back door. 

A score of upholstered and canopied bullock sleds, the only 
transportation facilities of the city, afforded a perfect climax 
to the unique situation — carriages and horses would have been 
entirely malapropos. 

The streets of Funchal are about as wide as the usual alley 
of an American city, running most often between walls of white- 
washed stone houses or the white walls of garden terraces, 
winding in and out like the convolutions of a corkscrew^ and 
paved with rounded pebbles the size of an egg, a pavement 
enduring enough but very trying on uninitiated feet. My own 
were bruised so that I could scarcely use them for a week aft- 
erward. In uumy places, notably in the public gardens and 
courts of the public buildings and best private homes, the pav- 
ing stones are arranged in artistic designs of black and white 
pebbles. The entire city — every street and passage — is paved 
in this peculiar way. 

The main business section lies next to the water, where the 



12 



Six and One Abroad 




COASTING AT FUNCHAL. 



First Sight of Land 13 

grade is not so steep ; beyond the stores and shops the rise is 
almost precipitous. But disdaining the interference of altitude 
and gravity, the white walls in sinuous parallels climb the ab- 
rupt slopes and the white boxes of houses hold on with a ten- 
acity that is marvelous. 

In company with a guide I climbed a succession of these tor- 
tuous streets to the home — I almost said the aerie — of the Ameri- 
can consul. It was a strenuous undertaking for a tenderfoot 
— tender foot is the exact word — but the end fully justified the 
effort. Having attained to a commanding elevation by a nar- 
row, circuitous route of pebble pavement between walls of ter- 
raced homes and whatnot of this unique mountain city over 
which the foliage of assorted varieties of vegetation drooped in 
profusion, we were admitted through iron gates to the premises 
of this accommodating official, and from the veranda of his 
bungalow which lacked nothing to make it a veritable elysian 
resort surveyed the outspread scene of city and sea below, and 
gained from his lips interesting information which is combined 
with personal observation in the following story of Madeira : 

The island of ]\Iadeira is 38 miles long by 13 wide. Over 
300 square miles of its roug^i and rugged surface has been put 
in cultivation by the natives, an undertaking that would have 
baffled them had they been as lazy as they look. The mountains 
all around are belted by a network of walled terraces such as 
have been mentioned, built to a considerable extent of pebbles 
gathered on the beach and carried up on the backs of donkeys. 
The amount of work required to construct these industrial forti- 
fications must have been prodigious, is almost incomprehensible. 
The thousands of little pocket farms are each about the size of 
a steamboat stateroom, upheld by walls eight to ten feet high, 
and every whit of the soil was carried there from the valleys 
in saddle-bags on the backs of donkeys. Great care has to be 
exercised by the natives when asleep at night, as Mark Twain 
has said of certain similar conditions elsewhere, lest in turning 
over they fall out of their farms and sustain serious injury. 

The population is 150,000, chiefly Portuguese, and yet the 
island is more densely settled than any other country except- 
ing Belgium and IMalta. A lady, formerly of Missouri, is the 



14 Six and One Abroad 

only American resident. The thermometer registers only the 
slightest variation during the year. So prodigal is Nature in 
her gifts of climate and vegetation that the natives cannot im- 
agine anything more to be desired, and regard the utilities of 
our civilization as encroachments on their ease and never to 
be thought of in Madeira. The capital and only city has a 
population of 50,000 citizens, each and every one of terra cotta 
color and lazy disposition. Lazy steers slowly dragging cano- 
pied sleds ; the drivers with prod and languid lingo keeping: 
them awake and on their feet ; a boy always attending the drive 
with a greas}^ rag which he slips under the runners of the sled 
periodically to ease the friction; uncomplaining donkeys in 
solemn procession doing the only real work; the slow moving 
streams of brown in the deep cut channels of trade ; the house- 
wives idling in the shade of palms; the priests in garb of shining 
black ; this is Funchal, set against a background that is a dupli- 
cate of Uden. It is as fair a spot as was ever kissed by a 
zephyr or laved in the lap of a sea. 

Grape culture and the production of wine are the chief in- 
dustries. The natives drink, all of them drink, and they drink 
all the time. But it is not wine that they drink ; this they ex- 
port for the money it brings. Sugar cane, strange as it may 
seem, is the national curse. Its juice is distilled into a nasty 
drink that they consume to the extreme of debauchery. Sta- 
tistics show that more alcohol is consumed per capita in Madeira 
than anywhere else in the world. Irish potatoes are grown ex- 
tensively, but they have been attacked by a disease that has re- 
duced the production 60 per cent in recent years and threatens 
the total destruction of the plant. Bananas are prolific and 
abundant, but the "West Indies and the Canary Islands, owing 
to better shipping facilities, have stolen the export trade of 
Madeira in this fruit, and it is now inconsiderable, whereas 
it was once important. 

Embroideries and ornamental needle work are a source of 
large revenue, as much as fifty tons of this exquisite stuff be- 
ing sold annually to the foreign trade. It is estimated that 
15,000 women and girls are constantly employed in the work, 
much of it being done under contract at wages of 10 cents to 



First Sifjlif of Lnnd 15 

50 cents a day. Girls as youno' as eiyht years are (juite expert 
in the art. I dare say, every home represented in our party is 
now decorated with some of this exquisite handiwork. 

A ride up the mountain on a cog road deveh^ped some rare 
views and experiences — moving vistas of emeraUl that were 
little more than steps of palms and bananas and cane and vines, 
terraces with their lapfuls of verdure tiin- on tier; valleys deep 
and narrow and rank and dank with luxuriant foliage; pro- 
found chasms throwing back against the mountain the echoes 
of the climbing train; below, the city radiant against the mount- 
ain side like red and white embroidery on a tunic of green, and 
beyond it the quiet expanse of the ocean like a mirror in a frame 
of blue. A Catholic church on the summit of an eminence at 
the terminus of the funicular road has among the usual con- 
tents of such sanctuaries a number of wax human limbs on its 
walls, placed there by the devotees of the Virgin out of grati- 
tude to her for healing the particular limbs represented in 
wax. 

To return to the city a ride in sleds over the thick-pebbled 
roads two miles down the mountain is exciting in the ex- 
treme. A native guides the vehicle on foot from behind with 
ropes, permitting it to glide with great speed. The road is 
very crooked and in the ride we took it looked at times as if 
we were to be dashed against the walls, but a dexterous manipu- 
lation of the reins sent us safely around the threatening bends 
and we landed right =ide up with care at the foot of the mount- 
ain, the driver sweating and blowing from the run. Time 9 
minutes; fare two shillings and "if you please, 20 reis for a 
drink." 

In enumerating the industri-^s of the island, I have neglected 
to mention a most important and lucrative one — that of beg- 
ging. Every child there is a per-^istent Nemesis at your heels. 
"Penny, please; me so poor; need-a bread so bad." It is the 
only English they know and they know that sentence in French, 
German and Portuguese. Donate a penny to one of them and 
your munificence is heralded to the uttcn-most limits of the town 
and wherfn'er you go thereafter they swarm about you like a 
plague of Egyptian flies. In the midst of the contemplation 



16 



Six and One Abroad 




First Sight of Laud 17 



of some sublime scene in which the soul rises into the empyrean, 
you are suddenly conscious of a collapse to sordid earth by the 
plea of a little pie-faced mendicant: "Penny, please; me so 
poor." Drivers beg, guides beg for tips and booze, women as- 
sume pathetic tones and pose? and beg ; all classes beg, not be- 
cause they are needy, for they need nothing except to be born 
again somewhere else and graded up, but because it's their 
business and it pays. 

Three small streams, originating in* the jmountain snows, 
run through the city in channels twenty feet deep by forty 
feet wide, the walls of which are of solid masonry. The women 
do the town washing in the beds of these channels and when 
they are at work in long irregular lines, with their brown prog- 
eny half-dressed, half exposed, on the rocks and their primi- 
tive linen outspread on branches and shrubs, the scene is a 
novel and interesting one. 

The milk supply of Funchal is derived from goats which 
are driven through the streets in small herds. The goats are 
milked at the residence or place of business of the customer 
and tbe goods delivered warm and unwatered. The streets are 
cleaned by two methods; with brush brooms at night and by 
pigs in daytime. At any time of the day and at almost any 
place a poorly dressed and poverty stricken native, usually a 
woman, may be seen holding a pig by a rope while it eats the 
refuse of the streets. Late in the afternoon pigs and drivers 
may be met in droves on their way home. 

The money of Madeira is reckoned in reis, a rey having a 
value equal to a tenth of an American copper cent. The first 
experience I had with this money was in trying to settle for a 
light repast of coffee and fruit at a cafe. I asked the amount 
of the bill and was informed that it was 200 reis. "How 
much?" I demanded in a shock of astonishment that well nigh 
gave me palpitation of the heart; "I do not want to buy your 
shop." The little coffee brewer appeared confused for the 
moment, but seeing my flustration wrote: "I charge you 200 
reis for you eat." It was outrageous, but as I had been foolish 
enough to appropriate his wares before asking the price I 
realized the jig was up and there was nothing to do but come 



18 Six and One Abroad 

to his terms, whereupon I tossed him my purse and begged 
him to take it and cancel the obligation. The purse contained 
one pound sterling in English gold, nothing less, nothing else. 
But imagine my surprise when the little native shelled out a 
lot of iron change that filled mine and McCurdy's hats, and 
our coat pockets. Honestly, the change I received for that 
sovereign must have weighed twenty pounds. Out of this 
swollen remnant of my purse I bought a piece of embroidery 
for which I paid 2000 reis and could have bought another with- 
out depleting th© purse entirely. 

It was to Funchal that Columbus followed a dark-eyed dam- 
sel of Madeira from Portugal and, winning her hand, married 
her and lived among her people several years prior to 1492. 
His wife is buried there now and a tablet setting out these facts 
is on the old house where the couple lived. 

It is not surprising that a land of such poetry of landscape, 
such harmonies of color and sun, such symphonies of indolent 
ease and luxury, should have been introduced to history by a 
heroic and pathetic romance. In 1334 a young Englishman of 
humble ancestry, Robert Machem by name, fell in love with 
Anna D'Arfet, a pretty French maiden of noble family. The 
addresses of Machem were warmly reciprocated by the young 
lady, but were opposed by her parents. The match was per- 
emptorily prohibited on penalty of disinheritance. Anna sacri- 
ficed her own heart 's feelings on the altar of parental obedience 
and accepted the proposal of another, a nobleman of her own 
country. The nuptials were fixed, but never took place, for 
on the eve of the loveless ceremony she met her first and only 
lover and they eloped under the cover of night in a boat. A 
storm caught the frail craft and drove it past the boundary of 
their reckoning. After drifting for several days they were 
stranded on this island which was then uninhabited and un- 
known. The fair young bride suffered severely from the ex- 
posure and shock of the storm, and in a short time died. Machem 
remained on the island for a year after the death of his wife 
and then he, too, passed away. In the year 1418, Zargo, the 
Portuguese explorer, landed on the island and found the grave 
of the ladj^, and on the rude tombstone was an inscription by 



First Sight of Land 19 

the husband giving a brief aceonnt of the incident and request- 
ing that his bones, if they could be found, be laid beside those 
of his wife and a chapel reared over the double grave. This 
pious wish was granted and the chapel is there today, a memo- 
rial of the pathetic romance. 

IMadeira is little known to the world, and yet it is one of 
the world's beauty spots. Sailors say they know no place 
which so delights and astonishes at first sight. How I would 
like to spend a season in the midst of its incomparable beauties, 
in the simple luxury of its ease and restfulness. 



CHAPTER III. 

In Southern Spain. 

Pitifully handicapped by superstition and ignorance, Spain 
has in a hundred years fallen from the van of European na- 
tions to a laggard's place in the rear. She is in a stupor, a 
soporific condition from which she arouses herself at times 
only for a puff at a cigarette, a drink of liquor or to bend a 
reverent knee to Mary. With a soil as fertile as our own west- 
ern plains, with seasons regulated to every necessity of her 
varied flora and an atmosphere in which her fruit is incubated 
with little artificial help, the Andalusian hdlb and valleys 
alone, to say nothing of the rich lands of Central and Northern 
Spain, have possibilities of wealth that would choke the mar- 
kets of the world. But the energy and spirit of once proud 
and prosperous Spain are atrophied and dead. She is asleep, 
and our little pop call will not disturb her. 

Cadiz is the southern door, a white city that runs out into the 
sea on a flat tongue of land to welcome commerce and travel. 
It is very, very white, every building of any character what- 
soever being calcimined to a brilliant white. In the dawn from 
an approaching steamer it looks like a chalk city that soon en- 
larges and analyzes itself from a solid mass into individual 
chalk boxes, in rows, and then these boxes become studded with 
gems as the light of the rising sun falls upon the windows. It 
is an old city — the Tarshish of the Bible, say the preachers, for 
which Jonah took passage on that truancy of his in which a 
whale was the hero. Founded in 1150 B. C, by the Phoenicians, 
saith the diaries of the Doctors, it was regarded by them as the 
uttermost limit of the world. It was a dependency of Car- 
thage from 500 B. C. to the second Punic war, when it became, 
under Caesar, one of the impregnable fortresses of the Roman 
empire, and Roman writers are eloquent in praise of its palaces 
and aqueducts, its great commerce and mighty fleets. In the 
fifth century it fell into the hands of the Goths and later was 
a possession of the Moors. "When Spain was at her zenith^ 



In Southern Spain 21 



following the discovery of America, a continuous flood of gold 
flowed into the tills of her traders and the treasury of her 
kings, until as late as 1770 when Cadiz, as the chief port, was 
reckoned the richest city on the globe. With Napoleon's ascend- 
ancy the first step in Spain's tragic decline was taken, and as 
her character was not strong enough to withstand the luxury 
of wealth, it was too weak to convalesce from the lethargy that 
wealth entailed. 

Cadiz now is therefore not the Cadiz of old. Like the rest of 
the country of which it is or ought to be an important port it 
is bedridden with a well-developed case of inertia and compli- 
cations. It is satisfied with its present status, which is the 
same as its past status, and contemplates no radical changes in 
its programme of inanition and lassitude. The quaint mediaeval 
thoroughfares are so at variance with everything western that 
the visitor seems to be wandering in his dreams among the peo- 
ple and things of the long past. They are so narrow that I 
supposed at first they were alleys, and kept wondering when we 
should pass out of them into a street. But the expected avenue 
never showed up and the alleys never grew in width except 
when we emerged into one of the numerous plazas of the city 
and in these delightful places, as if in compensation for the 
crowded inconveniences of the slits of streets, always there 
was delightful tropical luxuriance of tree and flower and 
delectable avenues of palms. In very few places was it possi- 
ble for carriages to pass, and frequently vehicles were com- 
peled to back to a cross street upon meeting others unexpectedly. 

As in most Latin towns, the cathedral is the all important 
building in Cadiz. Costing almost $2,000,000 it is a mystery 
how the money was secured from these poor natives. It must 
have well nigh bankrupted most of them, so imposing is it, so 
rich in decoration, so vast, so far excelling in cost and elegance 
any church edifice it had ever been my privilege to see in 
America. But it is a mistake. There is entirely too much 
money in it for poor folks. 

Nothing would do the preachers but that we should visit 
every cathedral and chapel in Cadiz, and do it first, lest some 
accident prevent, which would have been lamentable. Being 



55 



Six and One Abroad 



in a hopeless minority, I could only register a protest and vow 
revenge and follow. One of the majority was a connoisseur — 
that is, he had some of the symptoms. He could not help it, 
for he had caught it from somebody else. It is not natural for 
anybody to be a connoisseur. It is contracted like all conta- 
gious afflictions, from others similarly afflicted, during sup- 
puration. 

This particular member of the majority — one of the galaxy 
of reverends — was a painting connoisseur. He was the only 




A TANDEM TEAM IN CADIZ. 



one of the party who possessed the astonishing information 
that a certain little old church of Cadiz of medisevial origin 
contained a $100,000 painting by one Murillo, an artist of some 
repute in those parts. 

Fairly beaming with anticipation and other symptoms, we 
followed the connoisseur and a guide, whom we had adopted, 
into a wee bit of a. church, where, after sweeping with tense 
breath and soft step along the nave, past transept and other 



In Southern Spain 23 



architectural landmarks, we brought up face to face with the 
famous picture. 

The guide halted reverently, inflated himself with an in- 
spiration of air, and began his interpretation. It was by 
jMurillo and therefore must be very, very fine. 

"And who was Murillor' I had the temerity to interrupt. 

"^lureel-yo! Don't-ee sobby grande Mureel-yo? Most big 
picture hombre in de world ! ' ' 

''No, never heard of IMureel-yo in my life," I sorrowfully 
confessed amid pianissimo hisses from the connoisseur. 

It represented "The Marriage of St. Catherine." I did not 
know who St. Catherine was, and do not know yet, but that 
was unimportant, and I did not care to interrupt the pleasant 
little speech on unimportant details. However, I did venture 
this one further query: "Where is the gentleman that St. 
Catherine is supposed to be tying up with r ' It was a stunner, 
and he could do nothing to solve the problem, but sputtered 
a polyglot explanation one-eighth English and seven-eighths 
Spanish. A cherub from above was in the act of placing a ring 
upon Catherine's finger and a number of plump babes with 
sweet faces were tumbling gleefully in clouds overhead, while 
an austere man with bushy whiskers, almost an exact likeness 
of James Russell Lowell, brooded over the scene in misty indis- 
tinctness from the panel surmounting the picture. I hope I 
am not irreverent in the way I have stated this, for it was the 
painter's attempt to reproduce God Almighty. If I had an 
idea the Great Ruler of the Universe looked anything like 
:\Iurillo's $100,000 painting represents Him to be, I confess 
that I would have to readjust my view of Him. Bold, indeed, 
must be the brush that would venture into such a field. This 
picture has particular interest for connoisseurs, because it was 
the last of the celebrated painter. When he had given it the 
final touch he stepped back to inspect the result, and, missing 
his footing, fell from the scaffolding to the marble floor and 
was killed. (Diary of the Doctors, page 169.) 

In a museum close to this church, a sarcophagus, dug up re- 
cently in the sands of the city's suburbs, holds the gruesome 



24 Six and One Abroad 

remains of a Phoenician of the ninth century before Christ. 
He is very old and but a skeleton of his former self. 

There are so many old things in this country that nothing 
with a history short of the Crusades stirred a ripple of interest 
in us. Only now and then did we encounter anything modern. 
For instance, the Andalusian Dance came in our way. There 
was nothing musty or obsolete in that performance. It was 
strictly up-to-date, up to the ceiling, up to the very meridian 
of high noon. A sprightly company of black-eyed, raven- 
locked senoritas were the performing stars, the dance consist- 
ing of a series of genuflections, contortions and kicks, super- 
inducing dimpled arms and rounded ankles and "ruffled cuffed 
absurdities," to the music of castanets and thrumming guitars. 
The skirts of these graceful damsels were visible to the naked 
eye. On the wall of the stage was a large painting of the boy 
Jesus sweeping out the shavings of his father's carpenter shop, 
which gave the performance a religious cast. The six reverends 
admired this painting very much and sat on the front row and 
studied it while I profanely watched the dancing. However, 
the dancing soon became tiresome by reason of its repetition 
and I retired to the outside while the preachers were so in- 
fatuated with the picture that they remained fully an hour 
longer. 

Every man and boy in aill Andalusia smokes — cigarettes 
chiefly, cigars to some extent, but they all smoke — and pos- 
sibly having acquired the habit here, they will continue to 
smoke in the hereafter. I had believed that Dewey achieved 
a remarkable victory at Manila and Schley at Santiago, but 
I know now that their boasted feats were but picnics with the 
toy manikins of a nursery. A company of diving boys from 
Madeira can run the whole of Southern Spain into the sea. I 
do not mean to be severe on this poor, miserable, decadent peo- 
ple and their sleepy, odoriferous, canyoned town, and I am 
charitable enough to confess that this severe opinion had its 
origin, possibly, in a barber chair, where I experienced a touch 
of the Spanish Inquisition. 

To locate the residence portion of the city was a puzzle : We 
had driven from one end of the town to another, and across a 



In Southern Spain 25 



number of times, but not a single residence was to be seen. 
We had seen pretty brunette faces peeping through the bars of 
grated windows upstairs over the shops, but it had not occurred 
to us that these senoritas were at home. We were in error. 
The homes of the people were really over the stores and shops 
in the very busiest parts of town— three, four and five stories 
of them. I understand that a few wealthy families have real, 
sure enough homes, from the ground up, in the heart of the 
city. 

All doors are locked through a keyhole in the door facing, 
the doors themselves having no locks on them. 

The donkey is the beast of burden, in Cadiz; that itself is 
significant, for any race of people who associate intimately with 
the donkey sink to the donkey's level. That animal will not 
affiliate with his superiors; he is either on a level with them 
or above them. A two-wheeled cart with widespread sheet and 
big straw receptacle swinging from the axle s-eemed to be the 
means of freight transportation. If the load happened to be 
extra heavy more donkeys were hitched on, not side by side, as 
we do, but in front of each other, tandem style. I saw as many 
as sixteen of these Andalusian canaries pulling a single wagon, 
and the procession was a comedy of sixteen acts, each canary 
constituting a separate act. 

There is no room for street cars in Cadiz and little need for 
them, either, as the population is herded together in a very 
compact space, everybody living in his own work-shop and 
nobody going visiting. Ladies converse with their neighbors 
acrass the streets, thus paying calls without the necessity of 
going down stairs and across the dividing space. Still there 
is a street car line along the shore. 

There are 18,000,000 people in Spain; of these only 6,000 
are protestants. (Diary of Doctors, page 172.) Seventy-five 
per cent of them can neither read nor write. They need to 
knock around a little ; to travel ; to spread out and let the sun- 
shine in; they need pepper, soap and school books, railroads 
and mules, machinery and electricity; to eliminate the jack- 
ass and trade off a few hundred thousand peacock-y soldiers 
for a hundred occidental school teachers, their lazy guitars for 



26 



Six and One Abroad 



lively cornets, their bull fights for base-ball, and cross up those 
beautiful women with a strain of western blood; and the re- 
sult would be a regenerated Spain, a renaissance of her former 
status as a first-rate power and people. 

Cadiz smells bad. It has a disagreeable odor like the back- 
door of a restaurant, and it was a relief always to file out of 
the shady gufehes to the quay and get a whiff of fresh air. 

For these and other reasons I was not sorry when the time 




OUR TRAIN FROM CADIZ TO SEVILLE. 



came to board the train for Seville, a larger and better city, 
ninety-five miles inland. 

And what a train! The engine about the size of an Ameri- 
can switch engine ; without a bell or cowcatcher ; the passenger 
coaches no longer than twelve feet and capable of holding in 
their two compartments less than two moderate-sized families. 

A gong sounds, a boj^ goes up and down the platform ringing 
a bell, the engine crows like a rooster, and we are off. Oh, 
goodness gracious ; are we on a sure enough railroad train ? It 



In Southern Spain 



is hard to believe it, for it does not look like one, neither does 
it feel like one, and the qneer thing rocks like an omnibus over 
a pavement. There is no stove, no water, no toilet on the whole 
train, and under our feet a funny little galvanized iron flounder 
of hot water for a heating system. 

No stations are called and we rattle along at the rate of about 
twenty miles an hour, passing first the ruins of a Roman aque- 
duct and a fine Roman road still amazingly preserved. Along 
the coast for .several miles are numerous vats of ocean water, 
and large pyramids of dirty salt standing like miniature 
Egyptian sentinels over a buried Thebes. And then we enter 
the farming district, amid blooming apricots and almonds, cab- 
bage and spinach gardens, white houses and rock fences, over 
undulations like the ocean when it rolls, and in tfie course of 
an hour stop at the town of San Fernando. 

By this time we have found a way to unlock our cabin door 
and we join the wholesale exodus into the open air. Every- 
body, men and women, seem moved by a common desire and 
head precipitately for a common place, the men disappearing 
under the sign ''eaballeros, " the ladies under the sign 
"senoras, " both compartments together but separated by par- 
titions of iron which are wonderful conductors of sound. This 
is absolutely the funniest thing I expect to see on the entire 
tour of the Old World. Theoretically, the Spaniards are right. 

The gong sounds, the boy rings his bell along the platform, 
the engine crows, and we are off again, this time penetrating 
at once the richest grape and wine section of Spain. The hills 
roll and swell as before ; every valley is a neighborhood of 
green gardens; every hill under cultivation; fruit trees are 
blooming, white houses are scattered promiscuously over the 
landscape; fences of cactus and century plant between thick 
gardens appear; and vineyards, orange and lemon groves and 
olive orchards ; now and then a straw hut with its half -savage, 
half-naked peons ; occasionally a small pasture where bulls are 
bred for the national sport ; macadamized roads, as smooth as a 
pavement and clean as a parlor ; haciendas bearing the names 
of their wealthy owners on their .white fronts ; and then the city 



28 Six and One Abroad 

of Perez, 50,000 strong; and then the outpouring of the train's 
contents and the comedy aforesaid. 

Now we run into a series of plantations where the land is 
being broken for spring planting, the plow in use being a queer 
wooden one-handled affair pulled by oxen. After this we see 
much more plowing in progress, and everywhere the same old 
plow and oxen. A carload of riding planters would either revo- 
lutionize this country or frighten the population to death. 

Not a single wild tree have we seen since leaving Cadiz, but 
now a pine grove shows up, each individual pine being trimmed 
close up to its top. Lumber is a rarity here, and I honestly 
believe there is not enough timber in the houses of all Southern 
Spain to build an American hen house, and there is no such 
business anywhere as a lumber yard. 

The donkey is in evidence everywhere in the country as in 
the town, but the country burro usually has his back shaved 
into queer patterns and by this caprice is supposed by the 
gentry to be better than his urban brother. 

Suddenly those queer, old, decrepit trees that we have seen 
all along, full of knots and riven by age and storm, begin to 
increase in numbers until there is now an unbroken forest of 
them on both sides. If the Spaniard would put his oil in 
earthenware jars instead of goatskins it would be in greater 
demand and his commerce in this line would surpass that of 
any other country if he would push it. 

And now we are at Seville, a city of nearly 200,000. I would 
like to write of the cathedral of Seville, a structure second 
only to St. Peter's in size, the pillars of which are so vast that 
twenty men touching hands at full arms' length can scarcely 
reach around one of them; with its organ so costly that $1,000,- 
000 was recently spent in repairs; with its exquisite carving in 
cedar ; and its criminal wealth in gold ; with the marble sarcoph- 
agus that contains the remains of Columbus, and the tomb 
of the great navigator's son; with its priceless paintings by 
Murillo, the ''Vision of St. Francis," from which the saint was 
cut out a few years ago and sold to Pierpont Morgan for $65,- 
000 and afterwards returned by him to the church; with its 
weird service, its sublime arches, the grand music. 



In Southern Spain 29 



I would like to take the reader through the old jNIoorish pal- 
ace, 700 years old, which, with its companion, the Alhambra, 
are the most exquisitely and delicately adorned structures in 
the world, its doors and ceiling of cedar inlaid with ivory and 
pearls, its walls of designs in mosaic; with its arches of frost 
work; its hall where Queen Isabella gave her jewels to Colum- 
bus; its rooms where in the midst of the most elegant and re- 
fined sculpture, some of the vilest crimes in Spain's bloody 
history were committed and with its Queen's bath tub 25x100 
feet in size. 

I would like to take the reader, too, into the picture galleries, 
where Velasquez and INIurillo and other noted Spanish painters 
have left their best productions. 

But in a trip such as this and a book such as this, details are 
tiresome and minute descriptions a bore. ]\Ioreover, only the 
most gifted writer can portray those things so that the reader 
may see them and admire them through the writer's eyes. 

The life of the Spanish people is full of interest, for it is 
all strange to us. There is much to admire in their customs. 
The women are the prettiest in the world ; in all Spain I 
scarcely saw a single lady who was not prepossessing, if not 
actually beautiful. But I wonder how they live and manage to 
maintain such charms without a wilderness of shrubbery, rib- 
bons and birds on their heads. There are millinery stores in 
Spain; one in Cadiz, two in Seville, and there is said to be a 
fourth in Madrid; but these are modern establishments to meet 
the demands of foreign lady travelers only. The senoras and 
senoritas do not wear bonnets and hats, but a modest mantilla, 
black, white or cream to suit the individual taste or the occa- 
sion and which is thrown over the head when in the sun or 
dropped down upon the shoulders in shaded streets. 



CHAPTER ly. 

Gibraltar and Algiers. 

A giant sentinel, grave, stolid, imperious, at the gateway 
of the great mid-continent sea, Gibraltar is the most valuable, 
if, indeed, it is not the strongest natural fortress in the world. 
From the Atlantic its outline is an abrupt slope that is not par- 
ticularly imposing, but a closer view, such as is possible from the 
harbor inside the bay, brings out the grim, defiant features and 
establishes the splendid commanding position it occupies. 

A solid mass of limestone three miles in length, seven in girth 
and three-quarters only at its greatest breadth, this colossal 
rock, in its isolation, is the result of some dynamic force that tore 
it loose from its original connection with the Sierra Nevadas 
and projected it into the sea as if in abortive attempt to dam 
the strait. On the north it is connected with the mainland of 
Spain by a valley but a little higher than sea level, and on that 
side the rock shows to best advantage. Full 1,400 feet, this 
adamantine chief rears his pompadoured head and sweeps the 
Mediterranean Sea and Spanish hills with never sleeping eye. 
It is not hard to imagine this bold climax as a recumbent lion 
with uplifted head and sloping posterior — an ossified emblem 
of the great nation that holds it. 

Around this famous pile the navies of the world have battled 
for advantage and the floor of the sea is strewn with the wrecks 
of the conflicts. 

Gibraltar took its name from the word Gabel, the Moorish 
term for mountain, and Tarik, the Moorish chief, who in 711 
A. D. was the first to occupy it as a stronghold. From that 
date to the present it has been taken and surrendered fourteen 
times, the Moors holding it altogether 726 years. It is related 
of Queen Isabella of Spain, she w%o purchased America for a 
ring and a necklace, and a few other jewels, that she was so 
intense in her desire to recover Gibraltar from the Moors that 
she seated herself on a certain rock in the vicinity now called 
''Queen's Chair," and asserted her determination never to 



Gihridtar and Algiers 31 



move until the Spanish flag should float from the fortress. 
The story goes that the Spanish arms were so ineffectual that 
she was about to perish on her stony seat when the Moorish 
commander gallantly ran down his own flag for a few moments 
and supplanted it with the colors of Spain, allowing the foolish 
sovereign to save her face. 

But the most miserable of all the sieges that have tried the 
merit of Gibraltar's bulwarks and the mettle of its defenders 
was the last one, th;it of 1770, when Spain, mortified and all 
but heartbroken at the loss of her cherished fort, brought the 
full force of her great resources to bear upon it. For four 
years the isolation was complete and the bombardment con- 
tinuous, but British endurance and sagacity was a match for 
the attacking guns ; the siege was a failure, and from then till 
now England has been in undisputed control. During that war 
the English dug a tunnel, technically termed a gallery, in the 
solid rock, to bring a flanking fire on the enemy without ex- 
posing themselves. Since then the gallery has been extended 
and others constructed until today there are seven miles of them. 

It was my privilege to walk through a portion of this under- 
ground network of conununication. The rough, ragged walls 
of solid rock; the resounding echoes of feet and voices; the 
damp, dark and sinuous passageways; every twenty or thirty 
feet a powerful dog of war, silent, severe and threatening, with 
his muzzled nose through the windows of the rock; the very 
presence of the uniformed soldiers in charge of our party; 
gr(>at precipitous depths underneath ; the uplifted tremendous 
heights above and the great guns visible there — all together 
conspired to give an impression of powerful latent military 
possibilities, of the terrors of war, of Britain's unstinted ef- 
forts to perpetuate her prestige behind the greatest navy and 
army and the greatest fortifications in the world. Gibraltar 
is bristling Avith cannon whose location is a military 'eeret and 
if the men behind the guns be any marksmen at all, no fleet 
could run the gauntlet of their batteries. 

Between the rock and Spanish soil a strip of neutral ground 
200 yards wide is fixed, which by agreement is not to be used 
or occupied by any nation. Near this point are located the 



32 Six mid One Abroad 



cricket and tennis grounds of the soldiers, and a cemetery holds 
in its solemn vaults the fruits of a dozen wars. 

On the west side of the hill the town of Gibraltar is located, 
tier upon tier, pell mell and promiscuous among the rocks. On 
its main street there is a constant stream of men of many 
nationalities — a rare opportunity for the student of ethnology. 
Such a cosmopolitan mixture of breeds cannot be seen any- 
where else in the world. Europe, Asia, Africa and the isles of 
the sea jostle each other in a confusion of costumes and faces 
and a Babel of tongues; tall, stately, slow-pacing Moors from 
Morocco ; red-f ezzed Turks from the Levant ; thick-lipped ne- 
groes from Ethiopia; gabardined Jews; red coated British sol- 
diers, and fine looking Americans. The city consists entirely of 
military officials' residences, their quarters and barracks, and 
thie homes of those necessary for supplying and serving the 
garrison. Of the total population of 25,000, 6,000 are soldiers. 
No one is allowed to establish a residence or business there ex- 
cept to supply the wants of the garrison, and for this purpose 
a government permit is indispensible. At six o'clock each aft- 
ernoon a signal gun is fired and all foreigners are routed out 
like sheep and at that time the Spaniards may be seen in 
droves going to their homes at Linea, a town across the neutral 
strip. Then the gates of the city are locked and no one is ad- 
mitted except on special order. 

The rock abounds in caves, the largest of which is 1,000 feet 
above the sea, has a hall 220 feet long, 90 feet wide and 70 
feet high, supported by stalactite pillars. This cave presents a 
most beautiful effect when lighted up. It contains a fathom- 
less gulf which recently became the tomb of a couple of English 
officers who fell into it. It is believed by many that through 
a subterranean passage at the bottom of this abyss, the apes 
which infest the Rock came there originally from Africa. These 
apes are respected and protected by the soldiers and roam over 
the mountain with impunity and absolute immunity, as they 
have done from time immemorial. 

From Gibraltar, Trafalgar Bay is plainly visible, for it is 
only a few miles distant. This was the site, it will be remem- 
bered, of the battle between Admiral Nelson's and Napoleon's 



Gibraltar and Algiers 33 



navies, resulting in a victory for the English and in Nelson's 
death. At night no lights on the seaward side of the mountain 
are allowed, but the illmnination of the town on the landward 
side, when seen from a ship in the bay, is almost equal to that 
of Funchal, Maderia. The British government has fine dry 
docks, and while we were there a warship was high and dry in 
the hands of machinists and painters. The visitor is always 
shown the beautiful Alameda Park, but as he is not at Gibral- 
tar hunting flowers he feels almost insulted when shrubbery is 
mentioned. There is also a Moorish cathedral, a thousand years 
old, but the visitor is likewise averse to mixing religion and 
war, and passes up the church for the guns. The constant 
blare of trumpets, the marching of troops, the galloping of 
mounted officers, the frowning of the engines of destruction, 
and others still that we know are ready for use concealed be- 
hind barriers and bastions, the men-of-war in the harbor, the 
sentries, the walls, everything proclaims the military character 
of the place. 

Gibraltar is strong, but when to its natural impregnability 
is added the military skill and dogged endurance of the British 
soldier, it becomes, as it has become, a synonym of all the super- 
latives of stability. And yet it is doubtful if Gibraltar will 
ever be more to England than a place to sink her money and 
to harbor and coal her ships. It is the opinion of experts that 
war vessels could pass through the strait unharmed under fire 
from the fort, by hugging the African coast, and if it be use- 
less for this purpose there is no excuse for its maintenance ex- 
cept as a matter of pride and coaling of vessels. 

At midnight we lifted anchor and silently stole past the 
sentries, unnoticed by the watch dogs of the mountain em- 
brazures, or augjit else so far as we could tell, save the revolving 
signal light that threw its searching rays full and fair upon 
us. The great lion lay still with his shaggy head turned alert 
and menacing tov/ard the unhappy people who were his last 
enemies. The shadow of the world 's best expression of strength 
and stability fell athwart the Mediterranean far out, and the 
moon traced its outlines in the water, as it had done since the 



34 Six and One Abroad 

morning stars sang together and Gibraltar was born in the 
labor of a world. 

For thirty hours we traversed the trackless thoroughfare that 
had borne the commerce of every age of man and had been the 
scene of conflicts of galleys, triremes and ironclads that changed 
the trend of history time and time again. This part of the 
Mediterranean, however, is noted particularly for the piracy 
that prevailed here unchecked for centuries. The Arabs who 
overran Northern Africa in the dark ages, preyed upon com- 
merce in the Mediterranean with a rapacity and cruelty and 
to an extent almost unthinkable. Imprisonment, torture and 
murder followed upon their depredations — a horrible orgie of 
blood and misery and a long nightmare of terror to civiliza- 
tion. The ghastly record they made may be surmised from the 
statement that 3,000 vessels were known to have fallen into the 
hands of these ruffians of the desert and 600,000 people, citi- 
zens, of every nation and of every rank in society, suffered the 
nameless horrors of bondage, of whom only the smallest pro- 
portion ever escaped or were ransomed. In six years England 
alone lost 350 ships and 6,000 of her citizens. 

We were approaching the old nest of these bandits of the 
past, and had already pictured it in our minds as a desolate 
and forbidding stronghold overlooking the sea and flanked by 
the sand dunes of Sahara, a fit and becoming habitation of des- 
perate characters. The low African hills were mantled to their 
feet in sand, sand that was wholly unrelieved except where it 
was pinned down in occasional folds by a boulder or cactus. 
Surely on all such a coast there was no fit place for civilization 
to harbor its commerce or to rear tolerable homes for its men of 
trade. 

The ruffled sheen of the blue Mediterranean glided by in 
charming monotony; the unoccupied hills rose and fell in 
graceful undulations; and night came at length and shut out 
the prospect and played its drama of dreams. 

Only a few of the ship's company besides the six preachers 
and the minority were awake and up when at early dawn we 
entered an expansive and very placid harbor, where, in the 
center of its crescent base, a vision rose and developed through 



Gihrultar find Algiers 5- 



the haze — a succession of spectacular surprises. A chain of 
blue-black mountains with crests of snow was the background 
first visible. As the steamer approached, a range of hills de- 
tached themselves from the darker mass, and on their front a 
white city appeared and gradually grew — a city so white that 
it seemed the hills had uncovered their bosoms to display their 
alabaster charms. Nearer, the scene resolved itself into white 
houses, tier on tier from the water up the steep acclivities — 
square and boxlike, as if they had been molded of plaster, and 
glistening in the rising sun and colored by it into an allegorical 
likeness of maidens with pearly teeth and sunny smiles and 
dresses of white. 

It was Algiers, atoning in penitence of beauty for its way- 
ward past. 

In the bay a number of large ships at anchor and a score of 
fishing vessels were spreading their white wings for the work of 
the day. 

Landing by tenders, we pushed our way through a crowd of 
strangely dressed men who surveyed us and stalked us with 
gaping curiosity, our guide himself being the most strikingly 
grotesque of them all, a fat, turbaned Arab with trousers that 
dragged the ground in the rear, their ample folds drawn to- 
gether below the knee. This necessary evil had been bargained 
for by wire and met us at the wharf by appointment. He wore 
a merry and rather intelligent face and in this respect differed 
from his companions on the pier who were a picturesque gang 
of cut-throats unless their faces belied their characters. 

First to the left and up a long grade, then to the right and 
up, and again to the left and up, and once again to the right 
and up, it was a fascinating, route that we were forced to follow 
from the water to the city's high level, or rather to its last 
stratum of tiers, and it was a surprisingly modern reception we 
were treated to after we had accomplished the picturesque 
ascent — a fine, wide, paved boulevard, electric cars with uni- 
formed motormen, and modern mercantile establishments. There 
was nothing to indicate that we were in an African town of 
former barbarian ownership and occupancy, except the strange 
and polychromatic dress of some of the pedestrians. French 



36 Six and One Abroad 



enterprise and skill had reared a duplicate of Paris in white 
stone on the ruins of the old Arab lair. 

But Algiers was not to be estimated altogether by its water 
front; it was partly western and partly eastern; partly France 
and partly desert. Just three minutes from the evolutions of 
our entry the boulevard upon which we clattered formed a 
noisy junction with a great unpaved, beautifully shaded thor- 
oughfare that was thronged with quaintly dressed, queerly 
mannered and curiously engaged natives. It was easy to guess 
that this place was the great market street of Algiers, its main 
artery of supplies from the desert world of which it was the 
port of shipment, where tired and dusty caravans dropped 
their bundles of tropic stuff and after a rest loaded up again 
with the commerce of Europe. The camels with pondrous 
awkward strides came and went in this interesting place with 
lazy indifference to the prancing bobbed steeds of the soldiers 
and the modern caravans of the rail and sea. 

Again the scene changed, and almost as quickly, from Be- 
douins in their resplendent array, by way of rapturously 
shaded and verdure-scented streets, to Jardin D'Essai, which 
is about the loveliest park that has happened since Adam was 
dispossessed of Eden. The contrast was striking between the 
irridescent display of primitive love of ornamentation by the 
natives and Nature's best efforts at luxuriant growth and happy 
blending of colors and shades. Angular-limbed rubber trees 
with dense canopies of foliage, sequestered retreats with pillars 
of palms and architraves of abounding vines, groves of lemon, 
banana and orange, rippling streamlets, and every flower that 
blooms in the summer sun — a very wilderness of verdure and 
bloom ; there cannot anywhere be a prettier spot. Amen ! 
saith the preachers. 

It was a pity to have to leave this place where one could 
almost "hear the voice of God walking in the garden," but 
we were to see yet more beautiful things than even this incom- 
parable garden. Big Breeches (by which uncanonical term 
the preachers had in an irresponsible moment dubbed the 
grotesquely attired Corsair who was our chaperon) had us at 
his mercy and he declared he would show us prettier scenery 



GibraJtar and Algiers 37 



than, as he put it, "the Devil showed Jesus from the Mount." 

Here the French have constructed a magnificent turnpike 
around the ravines of the overhanging hills and on either side 
of its devious course the homes of Algiers are located. Swinging 
along this road, now far inside a depression where we felt the 
fragrant breath of the dells and where numerous rills sang in 
chorus and gulches yawned in accidental discord, and every 
jagged shoulder of cliff was hung with rarest tropic drapery, 
now doubling the bold projection of a mountain, always climb- 
ing, always above the glistening city, always winding, twisting 
and curving, the ascent to ]\Iustapha Superieur, as the climax 
of the tortuous scenic way is called, was an ecstatic and unusual 
experience. Quaint, rustic villas which had been erected, in 
most novel and seductive fashion, by the commercial kings and 
the idle rich of Europe for winter homes, occupied every avail- 
able site along the charming drive ; draped most often, these 
paradises from red roof to rustic approach with, cataracts of 
vines, the white walls scarcely visible through the verdure, and 
the merest sprinkle of sun finding its way through the foliage 
of orange, aloes and palms and the radiant assortment of tropic 
growth to the velvet underneath. 

But prettiest of all, and sublimest of all, and absolutely ravish- 
ing, was the view from the lofty summit. From this altitude in 
proximity to the bluest of skies and where the scenery and 
situation was reinforced and overwhelmed with luxuriant veg- 
etable growth of every resplendent color and every delicate 
shade known to the southern sun, looking down from this se- 
raphic environment upon the milk-white city sparkling in the 
sunlight far below, and out upon the blue, arching sea, and up 
at the polished dome of the sky, a picture was spread that sur- 
passed even Maderia, and I dare say has few superiors any- 
where. Amen and amen, saith the preachers. 

And this was Algiers, the city of the desert. 

Astounded beyond measure, bewildered as if startled from 
a dream, we were taken back to the business section of the city 
where, after formally noting the evidence of French commer- 
cial invasion, we were shown the old Arab quarter of the town. 
In those funky-smelling alleys and the long, narrow stairs of 



38 Six and One Abroad 

streets, where ''every prospect pleases and every scent is vile," 
old Moors in the soiled and ragged robes of post-diluvian styles 
and in morose, embittered resentment of French occupation, 
emerged from half-concealed openings and sauntered past us 
frowning; women muffied to the eyes with tea towels and draped 
in sheets, silent and ghostly as disembodied spirits, flitted from 
place to place ; mysterious veiled figures glided softly as if to 
inaudible music ; all so weird and so strange that it seemed like 
a seance of spooks. Everything alarmingly quiet, so solemn and 
sepulchral. We felt as if we were treading upon the crust 
of a treacherous volcano that would erupt a fiery flood of long- 
contained fury were an opening to be found in the crust of 
French occupation. In the little shops swarthy-hooded men sat 
on the floor and when customers made purchases reached for 
the goods and delivered them without rising. No policy; no 
dissembling of their implacable hatred for the entire white race. 

Every Arab denizen of the town, including this remnant of 
the once virile and predatory INFoorish race, had sore eyes, and 
m^ost of them were short at least one optic. From what I could 
see of the women, and that was very little, I thought they did 
the proper thing in concealing their features. 

Algiers has a population of 160,000, of whom two-thirds are 
Europeans. The State of Algiers has 5,000,000 people, almost 
unanimously Bedouins and Moors, and in many places the state 
is fertile, well watered and has fine seasons. The city has a 
great foreign trade, is growing rapidly and bids fair to become 
the chief port of the Mediterranean. In 1815 Commodore De- 
catur, with an American fleet, first brought the pirates to time, 
and later France completed their overthrow and occupied their 
country. Under her magnificent management the native and 
his customs are fast disappearing, and will soon be swallowed 
up and lost in the new and progressive civilization swarming 
around him. 



CHAPTER V. 

A Semi-Colon in the Journey. 

And while iItc day was coining on, Paid be-ought them all to take meat, saying. 
This day is the fourteenth day that ye have tarried and continued fasting, having 
taken nothing. — Acts 27:33. 

The Apostle Paul was a tent-maker before he was a lawyer; 
he was a persecutor of Christians before he was a Christian 
himself, and he was all these before he was a sailor. It is a 
matter of record (Acts 27:33) above quoted that the great 
first and foremost champion of Christianity was a victim of a 
protracted spell of seasickness when as a prisoner on board 
a Roman ship he was carrying his case up on appeal to Caesar, 
the last trip he ever took on the water, so far as we know. 1 
submit to any one who has ever been in a storm at sea that 
nothing less than seasickness would have prevented passengers 
and crew from eating for fourteen days. The record nowhere 
implies that they were religiously fasting. Luke in his artful 
description of this aggravating feature of the voyage graciously 
refrains from details, and the story reads very much like Paul 
had edited the manuscript and cut out all that he considered 
not germain to his serious purposes. 

AVith a feeling of deep reverence and of profound respect 
for the noble hero of the cross, I stood in the place "where two 
seas met, ' ' and with the story in sacred print before me, recalled 
the incidents of the wreck and its interesting sequel — the break- 
ing in two of the ship, the purpose of the soldiers to kill the 
prisoners, the interference of the kind centurion M-hom Paul's 
diplomacy had won, the swim to shore and Paul on a broken 
timber drifting in, the camp fire built by the natives to dry 
and warm the passengers, the serpent, etc. On a rock marking 
the landing place of the stranded party, known now as St. Paul's 
Bay, stands a tall monument in memory of the incident and 
in honor of the chief actor in it. 

Malta is about as big as a semi--colon, and to the ordinary 
traveler just about as important. The pause there for a day 



40 Six and One Abroad 

was strictly clerical and in no sense gentlemanly. The preach- 
ers were wonderfully eye-singled to matters pertaining to their 
calling. Due in Athens in a couple of days, they were going 
there — not because Socrates, Plato, Aristophanes, Homer, Herod- 
otus and others lived there and wrought; not to see 
the Acropolis and the Parthenon, but — to see the Areo- 
pagus or Mars' Hill, where St. Paul preached, and to try to lo- 
cate somewhere in the piles of ruins the market place where the 
Apostle disputed with the logicians and others. Upon arriving 
at Malta, which I was assured by them was the Mileta of the 
Acts of the Apostles, they did not halt for one ten-minutes 
precious bit of time at Valetta, the capital and site of the sec- 
ond greatest of England's great line of fortifications, but hur- 
ried under a full head of steam for the place where the "two 
seas met," plumb across the island. And having satisfied their 
curiosity there and taken fifty snapshots and innumerable notes, 
and packed their satchels with pebbles for their congregations 
at home, a pebble for each member, we had to back up circuit- 
ously to the place of beginning, which was really the only im- 
portant physicial feature of the island. 

Upon leaving St. Paul's Bay we followed a beautiful mili- 
tary road, eight miles inland, to the ''Home of Publius, " where 
Paul and his party were entertained for three months. Over 
the reputed site of this home stands a Catholic chapel in which 
an altar marks the spot where Paul held mass each morning 
while a guest there, the important information to that effect 
being given in a Latin legend on the altar. Having made it a 
rule to comply with the Pauline injunction to "believe all 
things" on this trip, there was nothing else to do but to cudgel 
into subjection a robust and insubordinate doubt that arose at 
this juncture. 

A grotto in the chalky rock under this chapel contains a room, 
said to be the one where Paul slept and dreamed for three long 
months of the future of the great gospel he preached. I did not 
learn why he was given accommodations underground, but it 
may have been because he was a prisoner. 

In the chapel a marble slab relates in Latin how Publius, 



A Semi-Colon in the Journey 41 



after conversion to the Christian belief, became the first bishop 
of the island and lost his head in the cause. 

Hard by, a cathedral, dating back to the misty past, contains 
numerous paintings, in most of which Paul and Publius are 
conspicuous features. The attending priest here lighted a taper 
on the end of a pole and held it high over an altar sacred to 
]\Iary. First drojiping to his knees in obeisance, he arose forth- 
with and withdrew a curtain, disclosing a medallion of the 
Virgin ; and in soft and exultant jMaltese informed us the paint- 
ing was the work of Paul's secretary, Luke. Here credulity 
again had hard sledding, but the preachers themselves were 
this time on the brake. 

Then by a flight of stone steps we descended into a subter- 
ranean graveyard. As far as we went in these remarkable cata- 
combs, every grave had been despoiled of its bones and was va- 
cant. In the 6,000 little state-rooms of the dead there were 
upper and lower berths, berths for adults and smaller ones for 
children, berths for the lean and wider ones for the corpulent. 
There were ground floors, basements and galleries and a be- 
Maldering labyrinth of aisles, at every foot or so a solemn va- 
cant bed. The early Christians were buried there, many of 
them martyrs in the days of wholesale persecution. I confess to 
a failing for souvenirs, and I picked up what I supposed in the 
darkness to be a piece of stone from the walls, but which proved 
in the light to be a bone. I wonder what a story of sorrow it 
would tell could it only speak of the days when it lived in the 
upholstery of flesh. 

All these things, the Chapel of Publius, the cathedral and 
catacombs, were at Citta Vecchia, the old former capital of 
IMalta, a dismal, deserted, haunted hamlet of very ancient stone. 
Cicero in one of his best orations arraigned Verres, praetor of 
Sicily, on a charge of plundering the temples and robbing the 
wealthy citizens of Citta Vecchia, and stated in the same con- 
nection that Verres had factories there for the manufacture 
of cotton goods. 

The outlook from Citta Vecchia, wdiich is the highest point 
on the island (750 feet), is unique and interesting, revealing 
a wilderness of stones that are erected into fence-walls around 



42 Six and One Abroad 



countless little patches of green, a veritable honey-comb effect 
all the way to the water's edge and in every direction, not a 
tree nor any obstruction of the view, but the natural undula- 
tions of the surface. It is a crazy-quilt of rock and vegetation, 
without order and without break in the continuity of patches 
except where an occasional fort rises prominent in a command- 
ing locality. 

Valetta, the capital and chief city, is quite modern — any- 
thing in this part of the world that is less than a couple of 
thousands of years old is regarded as in its kilts — and a fine 
city it is, splendidly located on a hill of rock rising abruptly 
out of the sea. The fortifications, said to be more formidable 
than those of Gibraltar, constitute one of three Mediterranean 
links in the chain that unites England to her eastern possessions. 

Malta bears the reputation of being the most densely popu- 
lated country in the world, unless Belgium be an exception, 
the average being 2,000 people to the square mile (not, of course, 
including the city). The day's experiences carried us across 
it from shore to shore in two directions, for it is not over ten 
miles across the widest portion. Never was a ride more replete 
with interest ; never were views more picturesque, nor customs 
more quaint. 

The island is a rock upheaved from the bed of the ocean, and 
it is nothing but rock, rock from base to rugged summit and to 
fretted perimeter, except that a thin soil has settled upon it 
somehow from somewhere. The roads are carved from the 
rock and beveled and drained by military engineers and are 
not surpassed anywhere. As in Madeira, only more so, every 
available inch of surface is fenced with rock walls and culti- 
vated for all there is in it. 

The common design of the cities of Malta is similar to those 
of Spain and all Eastern cities, so far as I have seen — narrow 
streets, white houses, the people upstairs over shops and stores. 

The inhabitants are of mixed Al'ab and Italian origin, chiefly 
of the former, and are known throughout the IMediterranean as 
a plucky, temperate and industrious people. 

Maltese artificers in gold and silver are without peers and 
the dreamy creations in lace that come from the deft fingers 



A Semi-Colon in the Journey 43 



of ^Maltese women are esteemed above all others the world 
over. T!lie decks of our ship were lined with this exquisite 
finery during the time we were anchored in the harbor, and 
there must have been enough in the aggregate to have taken 
one woman a thousand years to create. It was a battle royal 
between the shrewd salesmen and the bargaining lady buyers. 
Holding up an ethereal collar a lady with a 98c demeanor would 
inquire "how much?" and the shrewd native, divining the 
inevitable "jewing," fixed his price up in the clouds. The 
feminine hands went up in surprise and surrender. But the 
trader had only begun the combat which his customer had sum- 
marily forsaken. "How much?" was his w^ary challenge to 
further negotiations and the lady, knowing the prestige of Mal- 
tese manufacture and confirmed in her estimate of its value by 
the high price named, readily offered one-half the figure, and 
it was her property. She boasted of her bargain, and he of 
a sale at twice the price in the shops of Valetta. 

A certain class of the women of Malta wear a peculiar head- 
dress, called a faldetta, that is invariably black and shaped 
like a sun bonnet with one side extended into a very large, stiff 
loop that reaches to the waist. 

Only one-tenth of the people can read and write, and this 
to the shame of England, who in the past hundred years has 
spent a hundred millions on her fortifications and hardly a 
farthing on the education of her wards. 

The law permits the marriage of children, and it is fre- 
quently the case that parents have large families before they 
are themselves 21 years of age. The prevailing ignorance, the 
great density of population and early marriages contribute to 
an infant mortality that is appalling. 

Catholicism is practically the only religion that has a foot- 
hold on the island, and it is said that in this church there are 
2,000 clergy, or one to every twenty families. 

The Phoenicians were the first inhabitants of this minute bit 
of land. They were succeeded by the Romans in 259 B. C. ; 
by the Vandals in 534 A. D. ; by the Arabs in 870 ; by the 
Knights of St. John in 1530 ; by Napoleon in 1800, and by ths 
English from that year to the present. The Knights of St. 



M 



Six and One Abroad 




A Semi-Colon in the Journey 45 



John, or Kniijhts of INFalta, as they are best known, were or- 
ganized at Jerusalem in 1048 as a military and religious secret 
order; they were confirmed by the Pope; removed to Rhodes 
in 1300, and to Malta about 1550, their numbers increasing in 
the meantime and their battles on land and sea being an almost 
unbroken chain of victories. Their struggles were mainly di- 
rected against the piratical ravages of the Turks and repeated 
attempts of the barbarians to overrun Europe. Their gallantry 
elicited the admiration of the Christian world. Under La Va- 
letta, the most famous of the grand masters of the secret or- 
der, the city bearing his name was founded and a series of 
fortifications were begun that have long been without parallel. 
Two of the cardinal tenets of this order were temperance and 
chastity, but with the growth of power and wealth the Knights 
fell from grace in these respects, and their virility as an active 
force declined. No page in history is more romantic than that 
which relates the thrilling story of the Knights of Malta. 

The Church of St. John at Valetta, is a remarkable basilica. 
In its architecture there are a hundred marble monuments to 
the Knights, and in its vaults many curious emblems of their 
days of chivalry. It is venerable with hundreds of years of age 
and history and is rich with architectural ornamentation and 
medieval paintings and needle and loom work. To the native 
the chief treasures of this church are four notable frauds which 
are guarded Avith great care and supreme concern, namely: 
A thorn from the Savior's crown, stones with which Stephen 
was slain, some bones of the apostles, and the right hand of 
John the Baptist, the latter a little the worse for wear, but still 
wonderfully preserved. On a finger of the cadaver there was 
once a diamond ring which the great herald of Christianity 
was supposed to have worn. Think of that, will you? John 
the Baptist in camel's hair clothing and living on a fare of 
locusts — John the Baptist wearing a diamond ring. I doubt 
it. I do not charge anybody with deception, but there is a 
mistake somewhere, that is all. When Napoleon captured thb 
city in 1800 he took the diamond ring from the finger and 
threw the withered hand aside in disgust, exclaiming, "Keep 
the carrion." And they kept it. 



46 Six and One Abroad 

But a yet more startling apartment in this remarkable edifice 
is a chapel whose walls and ceiling are lined with grinning 
human skulls. This gruesome decoration of bones is not dis- 
posed at random and in sparse bits here and there, but is ar- 
ranged with artistic skill into all sorts of designs, shaped into 
full framed skeletons that leer at you with ghastly smiles, into 
curves of arm bones and arches of clavicles and windows and 
wainscottings of ribs. In the world, civilized and savage, there 
is not another such a gruesome and appalling spectacle. It was 
a clever artist who assembled these, the relics of the sturdy 
Knights of Malta, into such extraordinary schemes of drapery 
and friezes and ornaments — here an arm bone finished off with 
finger joints and meeting another of the same kind and together 
holding a grinning skull as the keystone of an arch; yonder a 
row of columns with their tops decorated with skulls. 

I can see now plainly in memory that awful collection of 
bones, and I cannot help wondering now, as I wondered then, 
what a rattling and shuffling there will be in that old church 
on Resurrection Day. A skull will jump off its pillar and roll 
around in search of the spinal column to which it once be- 
longed, and ribs will be nudging each other looking for their 
mates; and there will altogether be an interesting time when 
all the bones have their reunion, and the Master upholsters 
them, and they sail away in the skies singing: "Oh, Grave, 
where is thy victory; Oh, Death, where is thy sting?" 

In the Church of the Monks, not far distant, is a scene al- 
most as horrible as this chapel of skeletons, for the bodies of 
all the monks of Mklta lie there unburied in the various dried 
and twisted stages of decay without decomposition, and wear- 
ing the cloaks they wore in life. A story is told of a young 
man who playfully pinned the dress of a lady to one of these 
cloaks. When she moved the skeleton seemed to rise and fol- 
low her, and the shock destroyed her reason. 

But all these superstitions and follies are partially offset by 
the splendid frugal habits of the people. Education will in 
time remove these horrible nightmares. Let us think of that 
day rather than of poor Malta 's present moral and mental plight. 
Let us dwell on the marvelous pluck of her people, upon her 



A Semi-Colon in the Journey 47 



illustrious past, upon her commerce of $5,000,000 annually, upon 
the pleasing- fact that in her savings banks, where the inhabi- 
tants deposit their earnings, there is $20 for each of them, even 
to the babes, and all this earned off bleak, rocky hillsides that 
would not support a goat in Texas, and which it would be im- 
pudent to offer for sale there at any price. 

And now farewell, Malta, with thy crazy streets of stairs, 
with thy darling, delicate, woolly dogs and dove-coated, soft- 
eyed cats, thy ethereal lace and smart tradesmen, and thy wilder- 
ness of rocks and commerce of sacred frauds. 

Hail, lovely, historic Athens, with thy marble ruins and 
glorious past. 



48 



Six and One Abroad 



' 












'^^^^^ll 






"i 





CHAPTER VI. 

AtheuL — lis liiiins. 

It was a cold, stormy morning when our ship steamed into 
Phalaeron Bay and in the enfolding cre'cent of historic hills 
found a haven beyond the reach of the elements. To the right 
a range cf mountains, turbaned with snow behind veil,-; of blue, 
.stood up and out of the sea. To the left a rocky promontory 
reached out into the water after the similitude of a quay piled 
high with white boxes, later developing into the homes and busi- 
ness houses of a little village by the sea. In the foreground a 
great basin held in its emerald lap, as if they had been pitched 
into it, a confusion of white houses with red roofs, and as the 
surge rose and fell on the low receding shore an engine and 
train of cars ran swiftly along like a needle sewing lace on a 
garment of green. A broad thoroughfare ran from the water's 
edge along the shore until it found an opening, and disappeared 
behind the hills. 

But more striking than any other feature of the view, an 
athletic mountain rose boldly in the foreground under an im- 
posing crown of ruins. Upon this prominent and striking ruin 
every glass was trained and every mind intent, for it was none 
other than that grand old veteran, that incomparable survivor 
of the centuries, the Parthenon. 

We were in Greece, a little water-gashed, mountain-ribbed 
country that lies upon one of the toes of Europe like a nail. 

Shivering in the cold wind, we stood on the shore a few 
moments and tried to reconcile the steam of a passing train 
with the marble of the past; and then drove for four miles 
along a well-paved road to the ancient city. Every knoll and 
vale on the route, every Greek-lettered house and passing na- 
tive was the subject of interest to us because of its relation to 
the great race that made illustrious history there. Even the 
drivers of our carriages might have been descendants of men 
who spoke with the tongues of angels. 

We did not graduate our observations in Athens by holding 



50 



Six and One Abroad 



in reserve the best cf the city's features until we had seen 
the minor things as is the usual method of procedure, but grati- 
j&ed curiosity at once by proceeding direct to the biggest and 
best that Athens has — 

The Acropolis. 

To lift the eyes from the mean and mercenary surroundings, 
at the base of this noble old hill, along its great sweep of rock 




THE PILLARS OF THE PARTHENON. 



as it rises like ancient Greece itself above the present, to its cli- 
max of art in sculpture — the shell of its departed glory — and 
having with divers interesting experiences mounted by the 
zigzag and almost precipitous route to the summit where sits 
in such majesty this heirloom of Greece, to ramble reflectively 
among its marbles, far above the din and cry of unseemly com- 
merce, under the same blue sky that spread its canopy above 
the patriots and scholars of the olden time — there is no fitter 
spot upon the earth to realize the impotency of man and the 



Athens — Its Ruins 51 



providence of God, the sic transit gloria of all things here be- 
low. 

Museum vandals have despoiled the Parthenon of its statues 
and carried them away into uncongenial captivity to consort 
with antiquities of less repute and without repute, and many 
others have been violated by barbarians who knew them only as 
pearls are kno\\'n to swine. Not one has been left, and scarcely 
any of its friezes, the highest attainment of plastic art, remain 
to chasten the dull and dolorous front of its lofty portals. All 
are gone, and only the imperishable, immovable frame of the 
great fabric has withstood the dismantling crowbars of the 
museum thieves and the outrages of the barbarians. 

The pillars and lintels are yellow — the mellowy yellow of 
age — but they are good for a thousand years yet against cor- 
rosion and will no dovibt withstand to the end of time any 
destroying force but dynamite and earthquake. 

The whole surface of the hilltop is a confusion of wrecked 
marble columns, enough to build many a block of costly man- 
sions. Guards are disposed about the hill to keep watchful 
eyes upon the tourist lest he attempt to chip a souvenir from 
a column or a step. A reckless member of our party of preac h- 
ers lagged behind the rest and, supposing no one was look- 
ing, hammered upon a broken monolith and put the result 
of his depredations into his pocket. But no sooner had he 
done so than a guard appeared from in hiding and arrested 
him for his vandalism. He was promptly arraigned in the 
magistrate's court, where with much trepidation and diffi- 
culty of making himself understood he pleaded his innocence 
of intended violation of law and urged that he should be dis- 
charged because there were no prohibitory signs posted to 
w^arn against such acts. He was discharged, but as he turned 
to go an officer gave him a kick from behind. When he 
protested gainst the treatment, the officer reasoned that he 
had a right to administer a kick because there was no sign 
upon his back prohibiting it. The incident was worthy of 
the day of Diogenes and was a wholesome lesson to the 
souvenir fiend. It is hardly necessary to add that the of- 
fender in this case was our Connoisseur. 



52 



Six and One Abroad 




Athens — Its Bnins 53 



From the Acropolis the eye is ravished on every hand by 
views as splendid as the world affords. The white dome of 
]\It. Hymettiis, famed for its honey and its muses, rises sublime 
and majestic on the east; little farther to the northeast is 
Pentelicon with its quarries of marble from which two cities 
have been built, and beyond it is Marathon, where one of the 
world's decisive battles was fought; Lycabettus rises abruptly 
out of the heart of the modern city higher than the Acropolis, 
and a white convent glistens on its summit like a crown; the 
city of Corinth is barely visible in the blue beyond the hills; 
to the west the Plains of Attica, green with growing crops, 
sweep gracefully to the sea; to the southeast the harbor of Pi- 
raeus, which held the navies of ancient Greece, is filled now 
with the fleets of commerce; Salamis Bay, esteemed for the 
defeat of Xerxes there, is in plain view; the blue Aegean 
stretches far away to the southern horizon ; and a marble city 
of 350,000 swings in the hammocks of the encircling val- 
leys. 

At the base of the Acropolis there is an ancient theater, call- 
ed now the Theater of Dionysus, the large-st place of that 
character in ancient Athens. It is in the form of an ampithe- 
ater, with a stage and orchestra space on level marble floors, 
and seats of marble in semi-circular tiers on the hillside. Ac- 
cording to the historian this theater accommodated 30,000 spec- 
tators. There was no roof and no galleries, and when a rain 
blew up during a performance the audience and the players 
would retire to a capacious shelter erected for the purpose near 
by. Several hundred of the marble seats are still in a good 
state of preservation. These particular seats have marble 
backs and evidently constituted the parquet. The dignitaries 
of the city had special reserved seats on which their names 
were cut, directly in front of the stage. Those holding gen- 
eral admission tickets must have carried cushions with them, 
otherwise they could never have gone to sleep on the perform- 
ance. This theater was discovered accidentally during exca- 
vations only about fifty years ago. Another theater, the 
Odeon of Herodus Atticus, has recently been uncovered at the 
base of the Acropolis. Those posted in such matters aver that 



54 Six and One Abroad 



it was an exception to the usual custom, in having a roof, and 
that its seating capacity was 6,000. At both places the sea- 
son was closed during our visit and there was nothing doing 
except when a flock of tourists entered in charge of a guide, 
like a lot of chicks about a clucking, hen, receiving without 
question the morsels of instruction doled out to them with 
great pomposity and eclat. 

Through the preachers on the ship I learned that there was 
a place in Athens called Mars' Hill, and that Paul once deliv- 
ered a sermon there. On the ship for hours before our ar- 
rival whenever a preacher was in sight on deck, in state-room 
or in meditation over the railing, he invariably had his Bible 
and it was open invariably at the seventeenth chapter of Acts. 
Paul was certainly a favorite with the clergy, and I doubt not 
the clergy were just in their judgment of him. The great 
apostle was powerful in argument, uncompromising, desperate- 
ly serious. He wielded the sledge hammer of logic rather than 
plied the brush of rhetoric. Unlike Christ, he rarely used il- 
lustrations. Christ was a man of sentiment and of keen appre- 
ciation of the beauties of both nature and art. Paul walked 
among the lilies of the field unconscious of their beauty or 
that they might fitly adorn a moral or point a sermon. Sur- 
rounded, during his stay in Athens, by the finest productions 
of the golden ag^ of Grecian art, he yet never saw in the peer- 
less Acropolis aught but the dwelling place of idols nor in the 
statues that lined the streets nor the graceful columns of tem- 
ples anything worthy of note or comment. Christ and Him 
crucified was the burden of his mind and of every deliverance. 
As I stood with the preachers on Mars' Hill and heard one of 
them read aloud the seventeenth chapter of Acts, I wished with 
all my heart that I could feel the thrill of emotion that swept 
over them as they stood in spirit with Paul that day: "Ye men 
of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious ; 
for as I passed by and beheld your devotions, I found an altar 
with this inscription: To the Unknown God. Whom there- 
fore ye ignorantly worship him declare I unto you." 

I stood with these reverend and worthy gentlemen again in 
the old market place, hard by Mars' Hill and the Acropolis, 



Athens — Its Ruins 55 



in the low ground at their base, where Paul met and disputed 
"daily with them that met with him," but not being so thor- 
oughly in the spirit as they, while they were discussing script- 
ure here, I stole away and examined an old water clock that 
was used by the Athenians in the time of Paul and to which he 
no doubt often referred when he wished to cut short his re- 
ligious discussions for a hot lunch at midday. 

The Temple of Jupiter Olympus is one of the most magnifi- 
cent of the ruins of Athens. Originally, this temple possessed 
more than one hundred marble columns, each sixty feet high 
and four feet in diameter, arranged in double rows of twenty 
each on the sides, and triple rows of eight each at the ends. 
Only twelve remain standing; three lie prone on the ground 
and broken into sections. The size of the temple was 350 by 
134 feet and was exceeded by that of Diana at Ephesus, only. 

The best preserved of all the old edifices of Athens seem to 
be the Theseum which retains its first form and parts with the 
exception only of its original roof, its friezes and its contents. 
All the massive columns are intact and the golden yellow of 
their weather beaten marble, their grace, and the whole digni- 
fied and solemn outline make an impressive picture. 

"Within a stone's throw from the Theseum is the old Hill of 
the Pnyx, a great artificial area 395 by 212 feet, which formed 
the place of assembly of the Athenians. From a rock which is 
still preserved there Demosthenes thundered his Philippics and 
Pericles persuaded with his eloquence. 

A cave is shown near this point where it is said Socrates was 
imprisoned and drank the fatal hemlock, and on an eminence 
stands a fine monument, well preserved, of a Roman consul 
who died about 100 A. D. 

We saw among other interesting places, the "exact spot" 
where Diogenes worked in his tub, and if the locality is not 
apocryphal it was there that he uttered the fine piece of philoso- 
phy in answer to Alexander: "If you please, sir, get out of 
my light." 

And lo, the Stadion ! Who has not heard of the great anthro- 
podrome? Of the Olympic games? Paul was perhaps not an 
enthusiastic Stadion fan, but that he attended the races there 



56 



Six and One Abroad 




Athens — Its Buins 57 

is indicated plainly in Hebrews 12:1, where he says: "Where- 
fore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud 
of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which 
doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race 
that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and fin- 
isher of our faith." Quod erat demonstrandum. Notice the 
Apostle's intimate acquaintance with the races of the stadium. 
The "cloud of witnesses" was the great throng in the bleach- 
ers; every weight was the tunic and sandals and weights used 
for practice; the besetting sin was the habit of drinking which 
athletes had to forego in order to strengthen muscle and create 
endurance, or smoking, or late hours, or sexual indulgencies, or 
any or all those habits of life that so easily beset one and hurt 
the physique ; the ' ' patience ' ' exhorted was the steady gait of 
a runner as contrasted ^vith another who started off in a spurt 
in the lead and was likely to become winded — the steady, pa- 
tient runner always won ; ' ' looking unto Jesus, ' ' as the runner 
always looked with anxious eyes to his sweetheart in the 
bleachers, or his mother, who watched him with consuming 
concern. 

The first of these athletic grounds was constructed 350 B. C. 
in a natural hollow where it was only necessary to erect seats 
in tiers against the hills on three sides, without artificial sup- 
ports. It w^ent down in the collapse of all the best there was 
in Greece and remained under the debris until a few years 
ago when a rich citizen of Alexandria rebuilt the whole Sta- 
dion on the exact spot where the old one stood, and in the same 
splendid style, at a cost of half a million dollars. The amphi- 
theater is of white marble and will seat 60,000 persons. The 
length of the race course is 1340 feet and of course the marble 
amphitheater is much larger. The Stadion, rehabilitated and 
resplendent, is one of the charming features of modern Greece 
and one in which she approximates her former excellence. 
While we were leaping the marble seats and rimning against 
time in the race course, a miniature demonstration broke loose 
from a party of Canadians who cheered the name of their 
country-man who won the chief prize there in a great inter- 



58 Six and One Abroad 



national meet, when the guide mentioned the incident in his 
story of the performance. 

What a history Athens has. How inexhaustible the stories 
of its struggles to the light, its struggles for the right, its hero- 
ism, its superb and enduring achievements in every field of 
refined endeavor. In poetry Homer has never been surpassed; 
in history Macauley has not equalled Heroditus, nor Thucy- 
dides; Solon and Lycurgus are the world's greatest lawgivers; 
Demosthenes by general consent holds the palm of superiority 
in oratory ; Aristotle was the first great mathematician ; Soc- 
rates and Plato are supreme in the realm of philosophy; Phy- 
dias in sculpture ; Pericles in statesmanship ; Miltiades in war ; 
and Sophocles and Aristophanes in drama. There is no other 
such record; no other such list of immortals. 

Modern Athens, like the first, is a city of marble, for it 
should be known that marble is so plentiful that the very streets 
are paved and curbed with it. Some of the inhabitants, it is 
said, have marble hearts. The streets are wider than those of 
most oriental towns and are cleaner. The people are thrifty, 
and beggars, thank the Lord, are scarce. The old town around 
the Acropolis is filthy and the natives are repulsive, but the 
new town is made up of splendid stores and a cultured, intelli- 
gent and ambitious class of people. The ancient dress of kilts, 
as worn by the soldiers and some of the peasants now, is much 
like that of the Highland Scotch and is quite attractive and 
novel. The natives in the city, have, as a rule, discarded this 
costume for th^e western styles. 

The fire of their ancestors is not dead in the breasts of these 
plucky Greeks. Listen. In this little kingdom of about the 
size of New Jersey there are 2,500 schools, besides numerous 
colleges. In proportion to its size it far surpasses the United 
States in its liberal support of education. There is one univer- 
sity in Athens with 3,000 students and with a library of 100,- 
000 volumes. 

In religion, the people are adherents of the Greek church,, 
which is a Catholic church Avithout a pope, but with a govern- 
ing board of four archbishops who live, one each in Moscow, 
Constantinople, Athens and Jerusalem. 



AfJtciis — Its Buhhs 59 



King George is a democratic gentleman and is beloved by his 
people. He is a substantial friend and patron of all progres- 
sive and enlightened enterprises. This is explained in the fact 
that he is neither Latin nor Oriental, for it is impossible for a 
Latin or an Oriental to rise any higher than the dunghill from 
which he springs. 

Before returning to our boat we waited in the city until 
nightfall for a view of the Acropolis by moonlight. From the 
crest of Mars' Hill we saw the western skies stained crimson 
and orange by the dying sun and its last rays fell upon the 
ruins like the kiss of a parent upon the forehead of a child 
that is dead. And then the outlines grew dim and dimmer in 
the gloaming, and from pale to livid against the sky, until it 
looked like the great rich sarcophagus of a king. But just 
when Night was in the act of throwing her mantle upon the 
ruin as she had done for so many centuries, the moon rose and 
threw her face full and fair upon the scene, and in the track 
of the long shadows the Night crouched and hid herself. Along 
the ponderous beams a current of silver ran and a flood of 
splendor poured upon the stately pillars and the marble floors. 
A grand and rather gloomy scene it was, productive of queer 
sensations. We almost expected to see the old heroes of ancient 
Greece materialize in the moonlight. 



60 



Six and One Abroad 




MY PASSPORT INTO TURKEY. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Some Dis-stink-tive Features of Constantinople. 

The Aegean Sea is dotted with islands so thickly on the map, 
that they appear to be only stepping stones between Europe 
and Asia. But from the deck of a steamer in their midst the 
perspective widens, and in the absence of continents from the 
physical vision, they are more like jewels in the azure brooch 
of the Mediterranean — rising in the shadowy blue, passing in 
the golden sunlight and fading in the dreamy haze. And each 
single pearl in the cluster sparkles with some charming legend 
or lustrous historic fact — Melos, where the Venus de Milo was 
found ; Paros with its quarries of the world 's best marble ; 
Chios, one of the seven birthplaces of Homer ; Demos, the cradle 
of Apollo ; Patmos, where the Apostle John saw the vision of 
the Apocalypse and wrote his Revelation, and others. 

Threading these gems of the sea the Arabic with unerring 
instinct wound her sinuous course from the shores of cla.ssic 
Greece till she carried us to the gateway of the Dardanelles and 
along the surface of this peerless lapis-lazula, past the plains of 
ancient Troy, to the capital of the Ottoman Empire. All night 
long and the day before we had been going north, and when 
we entered the famous straits it was in the face of a blizzard 
that bristled and snarled at us as a watch dog on the southern 
outposts of Islam. The liquid surface of the channel through 
which we glided was waved and grained into a fascinating 
negligee like a maiden's flowing tresses. On either side the 
mountains sat shoulder to shoulder, their laps full of forts and 
the forts full of batteries, their ranks unbroken except ^vhere 
once they retired that the waters might spread into the round 
blue sea of Marmora, and then again they crowded close to- 
gether that they might guard the crystal approach to the great 
Moslem metropolis. 

The Turk is so suspicious and so cowardly that he searches 
every vessel that enters his territory. Before leaving New York 
we were forced to obtain passports which so far as we could 



62 Six and One Abroad 

road them, seem to be written guarantees upon our part not to 
Ixidnap the sultan or elope with his harem. That wicked little 
instrument was a description of our persons, with a detailed 
statement of the size and undulations of the nose, color of the 
eyes and hair, the convolutions of the ear, height, weight, race, 
color and mental condition, all sworn to before a notary, signed 
by the Secretary of State and endorsed by the Turkish minister 
at Washington. Our steamer had to halt at the entrance to the 
Dardanelles and undergo inspection by officials with red fezzes 
and unmentionable breeches, and at Constantinople no sooner 
had our anchor grappled the mud of the harbor than a force 
of guards came aboard and took possession of our passports. 

A great city lay before us — a city of pinnacles, minarets and 
domes, of towering business houses coming down to the water's 
edge where they seemed to stop and brace themselves with effort 
to keep from sliding into the water — a city of a swarming million 
and more, a city ensanguined by the blood of warring religions 
and yet beautiful in its physical settings of hills and waters. 
The harbor was alive with ocean craft of all kinds from the 
barge to the ocean liner, and there was an air of business and 
prosperity that impressed us favorably and threatened to re- 
verse in a measure our preconceived notions of the place. 

Suddenly some one caught sight of an American flag and 
ripped out a lusty yell. It was flying from a boat that carried 
the American consul and was heading in our direction, and 
then a chorus of cheers for the red, white and blue rolled up 
from the decks of the Arabic and were repeated by the hills. 
In distant lands there is nothing that gives the traveler more 
pleasure than the sight of his national flag, for it is the symbol 
of the home and native land that he loves and an assurance of 
protection, a consoling parental guardianship that is backed 
by army and navy and millions of men. God bless the Ameri- 
can flag — I never knew what the old muslin rag meant before 
— and speed the day when it will take a million bales of Texas 
cotton a year and a million pounds of Ohio wool to decorate the 
tops of American ships in the ports of the world. 

It was nearly night when the Turkish officers concluded 
their inspection of passports, and only a few passengers ven- 



Features of Constantinople 63 

tared into the city when at dark permission was given. At rest 
in the harbor we read from the books of the library the inter- 
esting history of Constantinople — of Byzantium, the first city, 
foimded by the Greeks 700 years B. C. ; how Constantine came 
with the "In hoc signo vinces" of a new Rome and the Chris- 
tian religion ; of the building of a great city and its adornment 
with the riches and treasured art of the decaying civilizations 
of the East; of Justinian and his famous Pandects; of Chrysos- 
tom, the silver tongued expounder of the gospel ; of the match- 
less Hippodrome and its fetes and riots ; of St. Sophia the peer- 
less church ; of the vicissitudes of the empire, its struggles 
against the hordes of the western woods who pounded its forti- 
fications so long in vain; its brave fall; its occupation for half 
a thousand years by the Mohammedans ; of the queer customs 
of this strange people, their religion and government. And 
with the recollection of this history brooding like a nightmare 
over our pillows, we abided the coming of the day and its visual 
revelations. 

During the night the Unseen Hand, the same that through 
the centuries has guided the destinies of men and nations in a 
way past mortal understanding and yet for the best, threw a 
mantle of pure white over the city to hide its most patent de- 
formities, and in the morning through the showering flakes it 
appeared as charming and chaste as a virgin in her veil. 

Wrapped and with overcoats buttoned to our chins, we set 
foot upon the pier. 

A throng of Turks, of the unspeakable variety and of the 
vintage of the twelfth century, red topped and with that in- 
comprehensible surplus of baggy cloth pendant from their seats, 
gazed curiously at us, the infidels of the West, as we landed and 
fought our way through them and an advance guard of the in- 
evitable post card vendors. Yes, even in Constantinople the 
post card agitator measures his insanity with the insanity of 
the western tourist — the Occident crazy to buy, the orient crazy 
to sell. It is a universal epidemic. 

We were not surprised at the sloppy condition of the water 
front, for such places are liable to be foul in any city, especially 
in a snow storm. But we expected better of the streets and 



Six and One Abroad 



were astounded when we drove through them and found that 
they were filthy in the superlative degree. The sweepings from 
the stores, the slops from the eating house, the refuse of men 
and animals, the grinning cadavers of extinct cats and dogs, 
and the accumulated rubbish from everywhere, all dumped by 
common consent into the street, there to decompose and raise a 
litter of smells — this was the threshold of Constantinople and its 
first dis-stink-tive feature. 

The management of our ship, with wise forethought, had pro- 
vided every necessary thing for our comfort, except clothespins 
for the nose in Constantinople. I have looked in the diction- 
aries and synonym books under the heads of "offensive," 
"foul," "vile," "horrible," and similar terms to find a word 
to fitly describe this carnival of odors, this riot of filth, but no 
living English word is rank enough for the purpose. There is 
but one comprehensive, terse and violent definition — it is 
Turkish. 

And what better place in all the world, not only for Turks, 
but for an asylum for dogs? Here the dog has found his 
heaven. Respected far above the foreigner who invades the 
city, he is all but sacred as long as he lives and is sainted when 
he shuffles off his coil. And frankly, if I were a Turk, I, too, 
would revere the dog next to my Mohammed and pray that he 
might be fruitful and multiply, for in the absence of sewerage 
and a street cleaning system, he is the only barrier between 
the people and pestilence. As we drove through the streets — 
and an oriental street is always a narrow odoriferous canyon — 
the driver picked his way carefully through the herds of dogs 
lest he injure one and incur the displeasure of Allah. Most of 
these animals were curled up in groups on the little sidewalks; 
others were moping about without any effort to avoid the 
traffic. A remarkable thing was the way the traffic gave the 
lazy, stuffed beasts a courteous right of way. 

Please do not get the idea that these are ordinary dogs, or 
that their appearance or disposition on the streets is anything 
short of the extraordinary. They occupy the entire city, forty- 
odd thousand of them, and are so distributed that no locality is 
congested, and the supply does not exceed the demand. They 



Features of Constantinople 65 



operate with system, dividing the city between them, and woe 
to the canine that strays into quarters not his own, for he is 
promptly set upon and killed by his kind, unless he be swift 
enough to escape. This is a law that prevails among them and 
is said to be strictly enforced. 

The history of these animals, especially with reference to 
their origin and the time and cause of their migration, if they 
did migrate, and their establishment and multiplication in Con- 
stantinople, would be interesting. It has been written by some 
.story tellers that under the present Sultan the dogs have been 
banished from the capital city, but these story tellers are telling 
a story. 

The dogs doze all day and prowl and howl all night. It is 
the howl and trait of the coyote and not of the dog. An Ameri. 
can who lives in Constantinople was annoyed by a specially 
vicious dog in his vicinity ; and in the midst of his vexation, he 
shot at the animal. A furious mob of Turks surrounded him 
at once, and he was arrested by officers and thrown into jail 
on a charge of ''carrying arms with malicious intent to murder 
a dog" against the peace and odor of the city. It is a grave 
misdemeanor to kill a dog, with a maximum penalty of three 
years' imprisonment. In all the world there is not another 
such sight as the dogs of Constantinople. 

The city that was so charming from the ship was disagree- 
able from the carriage, and as we slowly moved along the 
crooked lanes of slush and putrifying refuse we were thor- 
oughly disillusioned. On every side were the oriental streets of 
stairs with the ascending and descending throngs, and every- 
where groups of sleeping or drowsing dogs. The current of 
humanity was like a river of red, as far as the eye could reach, 
a vista of bobbing, crimson fezzes; the larger current where we 
cautiously pushed our way reinforced by cataracts of humanity 
that tumbled into it from the steep side streets. T think the 
fez is the neatest and most attractive headdress worn by any 
nationality of men. I am also of the opinion that the Turks 
are the most able-bodied specimens of physical manhood to be 
found on the globe. Ah, but they are fine looking fellows, of 
brawny limb^, broad shoulders and tall powerful forms. As a 



66 



Six and One Abroad 




EXPRESS SYSTEM OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 



Features of Constantinople 67 



rule they luive a ])ad eye, but it is no wonder snch an irresistible 
momentum of muscle overran the effete legions of Constantine 
even beliind their battlements of granite. It is a nation of 
giants and, properly led and properly trained, they can whip 
any other country. The wonder of it is how such an uphol- 
stery of physical strength and stature can be attained in such 
a foul environment. See those big boned fellows, doing the duty 
of express wagons and teams; how they are bending under the 
great burdens on their backs. Notice that one particularly; 
there must be 400 pounds of heavy boxed freight on his back; 
how the ligaments of his brown face stand out like cable strands 
of iron ; how firmly he plants his foot on the muddy pavement ; 
who is he? The freight and package delivery system of the 
city. There are no express wagons nor moving vans; just the 
backs and muscles of men. 

Every now and then we passed a fountain where persons 
were filling vessels, usually empty Standard Oil cans, or drink- 
ing from cups, and some one usually officiating in the distri- 
bution of the water. We learned that the city was full of these 
fountains, most of them built by the municipality, but many 
erected by private capital and actually endowed. At these lat- 
ter an attendant is paid to serve the liquid free to all comers 
and keep things in repair. One of the precepts of Mohammed 
deserves to be specially commended, and in that precept is 
found the secret of the health of the people and of their superb 
physiques. He inveighs against the drinking of intoxicants as 
a sin against Allah, and it is one of the astonishing proofs of 
the restraining force of their religion that one hundred and 
eighty millions of IMohammedans have faithfully obeyed this 
law 1,300 years. Say what you will about the Turk, but give 
him credit for the finest example of sobriety among the races 
of men. 

Constantinople is divided by a narrow arm of the Bosphorus 
called the Golden Horn. On the northern side is a section called 
Galata where there are as many Europeans as natives, and an- 
other section called Pera which is strictly European. On the 
southern side, the old city of Stamboul, which is Turkish to the 
core, is located. The long bridge connecting the two divisions 



68 Six and One Abroad 

is the main throbbing artery of the metropolis, where two cur- 
rents of humanity sweep past each other from dawn till dark. 
I drove across this popular connection in a blinding snow storm 
and later in the day sought it out again on foot for a study of 
the complex life of the people. It is a drawbridge and at stated 
times is lifted to permit the passage of ships. It is also a toll 
bridge and must yield the government a marvelous harvest of 
coin. In the quiet waters on either side there were forests of 
masts and ships' rigging, skimming row boats and red-hatted 
men bending to the oars. On the bridge, a continuous rumble 
of wheels and clatter of horses' hoofs, a veritable Bosphorus of 
agitated fezzes, a cyclorama of startling costumes, a masquer- 
ade of sects and classes and nations — the aristocrat in braid 
and gilded display, the tattooed beggar in his wrap of rags, 
the pompous soldier, the woman spook with her face in eclipse, 
the Jew, the Greek, the Arab, the gaping tourist, the native 
porter bending under his burden, the toll taker — the whole com- 
posing a stirring and amazing potpourri of color and condi- 
tions that is unsurpassed anywhere unless it be in Cairo. 

In Stamboul the buildings were low and the citizens unpro- 
gressive, and but for a tram car that made semi-occasional trips 
along the twisted streets we could have easily imagined we were 
in the dawn following the midnight of the dark ages. This 
car was pulled by horses and was preceded by a herald on foot 
who blew a horn, and that horn the crumpled output of a ram. 

As the main street was only about fifteen feet wide a con- 
stant glut of humanity and vehicles was inevitable. In this 
section mosques were numerous and the devout citizenship had 
mounted their homes with low domes in imitation of their 
churches. After an hour of slow driving, innumerable stops 
and incessant "hiyi's" from our driver we drew up at a museum 
which proved to be quite a store house of crippled antiquities 
and mutilated statues, the magnificent marble sarcophagus of 
-Alexander the Great being the chief attraction. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

St. Sopliia, the Bazars, and the Bosphoriis. 

The city of Constantinople is so old and the besom of strife 
has swept over it so often and so fiercely that scarcely a vestige 
of its early history remains to tell the tragic tale of its rise and 
fall — only the gray walls, useless now, and a few monuments, 
and that splendid pile of the world's best second-hand sculpture 
— St. Sophia, beautiful even in its Ottoman setting and against 
its background of crimsoned history. Justinian built it at the 
enormous cost of $60,000,000 contributed for the purpose by all 
classes of and from all parts of the empire. The most skillful 
builders of the age were employed to construct it upon plans 
revealed to the emperor by an angel in a dream. (The angel 
and dream part of this story was perhaps an interpolation of 
Justinian's to match the cross-in-the-clouds mirage of Constan- 
tine). After six years, during which time all other matters 
were forgotten in the one absorbing project, the temple was 
completed and the emperor, on Christmas eve, 537, laid aside 
his crown and exclaimed, "Solomon, I have surpassed thee." 

I had heard much of this building — no doubt had heard too 
much. The books blossomed with adjectives in its description, 
and those who had seen it painted it in such glowing colors 
that we approached it from the architectural desert of old 
Stamboul with great expectations. In charge of an orthodox 
guide, we passed by way of a narrow, sloppy introduction of 
street into a tower wherein we were wound around and up 
by a spiral footway till we were discharged into a gallery over- 
looking the main floor. 

"Ah, me! Finest specimen of Byzantine art in the world! 
Lovely columns; grand arches," was the ecstatic exordium of 
our conductor. 

True ; to some extent ; but the view was blotched by forty- 
eleven-dozen Turkish rugs that curled rudely at their edges 
and made a mess of the clean marble floor, and by the Mo- 
hammedans in head rags and extension breeches and bare, brown 



70 



Six and One Abroad 



feet squatted around and going through the genuflections of 
worship. 

''Magnificent dome! Beautiful mosaics!" continued the 
guide in an effusion of mangled English. True; but the grace- 
ful sweep of the dome and the labyrinth of arches that sup- 
ported it were blurred by a flock of pigeons that roosted in 
the cloisters and left the stain of their droppings on every 
floor and balustrade and pillar. Strange idea that of making 




ENTRANCE TO THE BAZARS OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 



a pigeon roost of so noble a sanctuary, but it is the Turkish 
way. The only wonder is that dogs, too, are not kenneled there. 
From a dozen positions in the balconies the guide spun his 
skein of ecstacy and exaggeration, and we, his dupes, wondered 
and retrospected. Then stepping again into the spiral hopper, 
we unwound the quaint old elevator to the starting point. No 
infidel can touch the holy floor of a mosque unless he be shod 
in No. 12 goat skin slippers ; and in these gondolas we slided 



St. Sophia, Bazars, and Bosphoriis 71 

ill aud glided about in a comic farce — all of us except those who 
wore rubbers, which were deemed sufficient to prevent con- 
tamination. It was hard in this ridiculous equipment to ap- 
preciate the real merit of the imposing old structure. But look 
up ! High up and above the distracting interpolations of su- 
perstition, up to the stately arches and crowning archivolts, up 
to the sweeping, canopy of gold and catch the tints that are 
penciled there, remembering that it is the romance and witchery 
of the early Aladdins of art and that the porphyry columns are 
the same that supported the unrivaled Temple of Diana at 
Ephesus! It was beautiful, in a way, but it was a beauty that 
was tinged with sadness, and to save my life I could not work 
up a spark of enthusiasm over such a minor matter as archi- 
tectural technique for thinking of the dreadful carnage that 
marked the transition of the place from a temple of the Savior 
to a moscfue of the later Prophet, when twenty thousand Chris- 
tians were butchered there, in the very place where we were 
standing, and their blood ran in streams on the floor. 

It is a short drive and an abrupt mental lapse from St. Sophia 
to the bazars. As the IMohammedans look forward to a pil- 
grimage to Mecca, so our ladies looked forward to a visit to 
the bazars of Constantinople. ^Marvelous city within a city, 
these bazars ! Four thousand two hundred shops under a 
single roof; nine miles of narrow, unspeakable streets and they 
glutted to the last limit with a mass of trading, yelling, smell- 
ing humanity that jostled itself in a general promiscuous mix- 
up — a prospect that would have been too much for any foreign 
civilized woman except an American, and even for her upon 
any mission but shopping. The Turk, as eager to sell as our 
dames were to buy, opened the way out of the street to hi^} 
shop that was a concern no larger than a steamboat cabin, and 
a steamboat cabin is the smallest thing I can think of. In many 
of the shops the keepers sat cross-legged on the floor (for be it 
known there is no such a nuisance as a chair in all orthodox 
Turkeydom) and when bargaining with native customers, would 
make sales and wrap and deliver the goods without moving from 
their easy position. But the moment a bunch of American 
women would storm the little hole in the wall they would rise 



Six and One Abroad 



and prepare for the inevitable battle of price and counter price. 

The bazar area was sectioned off so that wares were sold 
only on streets assigned to that class of goods — rugs, laces and 
kindred material on one street, shoes on another, jewelry on 
another, etc. The upshot of such an arrangement was that we 
trousered sons of Adam had to traverse the entire nine miles 
of alleys to accommodate the omnivorous purchasing penchant 
of the ladies. We rubbed joints with donkeys, butted into the 
baggy declivities of Turks, elbowed mysterious veiled women, 
collided with robed Arabs, dodged eunuchs — those curios, pre- 
posterous, elongated, harmless burnt-cork obelisks who were out 
with children of the aristocracy on shopping and airing mis- 
sions; saw narghalies in operation, those queer Oriental pipes 
of lofty stature and vermiform appendix — ran into covies of 
vagrant odors, and finally, loaded down with shawls, opera 
bags, cushions, embroidery, mother of pearl boxes, brass bowls, 
rugs, silks, fans, dirks, sabers, fezzes, veils, shoes, and other 
miscellaneous et ceteras, we issued from the long, dark tunnels 
into the light. 

Just then, in front of us in full view, a muezzin appeared on 
the balcony of a minaret and called out in melodious baritone 
the appeal to devotions. Immediately others were heard in the 
distance, like echoes of the first one, and still others and others 
in all parts of the city. The sound of the combined voices was 
like unto the whangey music of a bagpipe. A shopkeeper turned 
his face to the southeast — toward Mecca — and began to pray. 
Others did likewise, but only a few paid any attention to the call 
as long as there was a chance to sell something. The great major- 
ity kept right on in their work of separating piasters from the in- 
fidel and in non-devotional pursuits. The song of the muezzin 
was, of course, in the native tongue, but translated into Eng- 
lish it was: "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is 
his prophet. Come to prayers ; come to prayers. ' ' Five times 
a day this call is made from every minaret in Turkey and Tur- 
key's dependencies. All devout Mohammedans drop secular 
matters and repair at once to the nearest mosque to pray. Some 
perform their devotions from any place where they may chance 
to be at the time of the call, but prayers are not deemed of 



St. Sophia, Bazars, and Bosphorus 73 

iniich consequence outside the sacred atmosphere of the sanct- 
uary. 

The women of Turkey are slaves to the queerest and most 
ridiculous fashion in the world. It was all I could do to keep 
from, accidentally or somehow else, lifting one of those queer, 
grotesque veils and peeping at the prisoner inside. Indeed, I 
did venture to get close to one of these spooks, one afternoon on 
the Galata bridge, and looked rudely through her figured mask 
of gauze, and I saw that her features were comely and that she 
was smiling unresentfully at my impudence. But just when I 
was becoming interested, a big, red-hatted officer tapped me on 
the shoulder and broke up the seance. A Turkish woman is 
never seen on the streets with a man, and no man is ever al- 
lowed to see the face of a woman except he be her father, hus- 
band, son or brother. 

In that benighted land there is no such thing as courtship. 
And what a deprivation ! What, indeed, is marriage without 
the delightful prelude of smiles and tete-a-tetes, the golden mo- 
ment of engagement, the rapture of anticipation and the in- 
effable plannings for the life where arithmetic is shattered and 
one and one make three and sometimes half a dozen? In Tur- 
key there is no wooing, no love, except such as is wrought out 
in the home after the nuptials. The father chooses his son-in- 
law, and groom and bride see each other's faces for the first 
time only when their lives have been united for better or 
worse. 

A male visitor in a Turkish home can never see the face of 
his hostess and cannot enter her apartments, even though he be 
a relative. Out in the street, although a Turkish woman may 
not show her features, it is parliamentary for her to exhibit her 
ankles, and I noticed that she was always strictly parliamentary 
in that respect. Women and men are not allowed to sit to- 
gether, in the home, in the mosque nor street car, nor anywhere. 
More than that women must, as near as possible, be out of 
sight to the opposite sex. To insure absolute privacy and se- 
clusion, the windows of the female apartments of a home are 
screened with close lattice, so that the curious feminine eye may 
look upon the passing crowds and yet be invisible to any pro- 



74 



Six and One Abroad 







^7 Mohammedan Women. Wohammeftttntrrfic £-vrt»u>»i. .Fenimes Missuhnai 



MOHAMMEDAN WOMEN. 



St. Sophia, Bazars, and Bospliorus 75 

fane nuisciiline optic. On trains, in waiting rooms, steamboats 
and street ears, there are separate compartments where parti- 
tion walls come to the assistance of the ladies' veils in effecting 
their complete isolation. 

Birds, as are dogs, are mnch respected in Constantinople and 
it is a crime to kill them. Above the trellised rigging of the 
ships in the harbor the air was alive with the white wings of 
gulls, and myriads of wild ducks rode the waves and dived, 
conscious of their immunity. Here again the Koran has a 
bright page and again is evident its influence upon its obedient 
believers. It proclaims the taking of animal life a sin and to 
comply with its precepts many devout Turks refrain from eat- 
ing meat. A strange mixture of gentleness and brutality is the 
Koran — a bible that holds sacred the innocent lives of birds 
and beasts and yet bestows the prize of blissful immortality 
upon the hook-nosed Turk who sheds the blood of the ''infidel." 

I shall never forget the bright, cheery Sunday morning when 
we lifted anchor at Constantinople and headed for the Black 
Sea, along the course of the incomparable Bosphorus. It was 
early morning. The antiquated town of Stamboul, with its 
minarets and domes, its cypress groves and white walls, its 
Sophia of noble pedigree and sad and sanguinary history, was 
the first to retire before the retreating disorder of houses and 
hills ; the multitude of water craft marched and countermarched 
in the confusion of escape ; the great yellow rows of buildings 
in Galata ran together and in a jumbled mass deployed out of 
sight behind the banks of the Golden Horn ; the sun rose from 
his sumptuous Asian bed and sent a shower of silver arrows 
into the harbor ; and the Bosphorus opened her plump, brown 
arms and folded us to her pulsing bosom — the bosom of the Venus 
of waters. Upon the surface of this beautiful stream the craft 
of mythological legend and of the great armies of ancient his- 
tory, of Xerxes, Darius, Mahomet, Godfrey and Tancred, have 
moved on missions that changed the story of the world. Legend 
and history have been swept in succession into the crypt of 
Time, Init still the noble, incomparable stream flows on and 
flows as pure and chaste as when from the passion of two seas 
it was born to bless and perpetuate their union. 



76 Six and One Abroad 

The hills, symmetrical and uniform, inclined gracefully to 
the water, not one out of line, and were crowned with beautiful 
villas and castles. Evergreens and vines colored the picture, 
and at one place the palace of the Sultan, isolated by a wall that 
climbed the acclivities and wound around the hillsides, added 
interest to the view. At another, Koberts College was promi- 
nent. As we passed this institution the 400 students, who had 
been apprised of our coming, waved their handkerchiefs in wel- 
come and ran up an American flag in our honor, and the six 
hundred irresponsibles of our steamer returned the salute vo- 
ciferously. 

At the entrance of the Black Sea we looked far out to the 
cold, cheerless coasts of Russia, toward Crimea and Balaklava, 
where another six hundred rode boldly and well. 

And then, doubling back on our course, we came again to the 
open sea. 



CHAPTER IX. 

Tiro Rainij Bays in Damascus. 

Damascus is the oldest city of the world, having maintained 
a continuous existence almost from the Creation to the present 
time. It was ancient when Jerusalem was founded; it was 
hoary with age when Komulus and Remus laid the foundation 
of Rome; it was an old city when IMoses led the Israelites out 
of Egypt; and had been standing for centuries when Abraham 
moved his tented settlement from Ur of the Chaldees down into 
Canaan. 

Its longevity is due to its location in a plain that is fed by 
two everlasting streams of water, making it a fertile resort 
in the midst of a forbidding desert. In all the Orient there is 
not a place more favored by nature for the perpetuation of a 
city. The Barada (the Abana of Scripture) gushes out of the 
side of a mountain a few miles north of the city, a full grown 
river from its very origin. The valley through which it runs 
is green with vegetation, and when it reaches the city it plunges 
into the very heart of it and dies— dies in motherhood, the birth 
of an oasis, the remnant dribbling away in streamlets and van- 
ishing in the sand of the desert. The Pharpa, another noble 
stream, heads at the base of Mount Hermon, and running along 
the southern limits of the oasis, shares with the Barada the 
credit for its sustenance. 

Damascus has a population of 250,000 and there has scarcely 
been a time in its existence when it did not contain a popula- 
tion as large or larger. Founded by Uz, the grandson of Shem, 
it is mentioned a number of times in Genesis as an important 
city in the days immediately following the flood. Its commer- 
cial prestige has always been due principally, of course, to its 
situation in a fertile oasis in the midst of a desert, but also 
to its location midway between the great territories of Persia 
and Arabia to the east and the ports of the Mediterranean to 
the west. All the caravan roads of Northern Syria converge 
here. 



78 



Six and One Abroad 




Two Rainij Dnys in Da))iascus 79 

Daniaseiis from time immemorial has been noted for the 
superior excellency of certain wares it produced. No linen is 
as good as the damadv of Dama.scus. Its rng.s are even superior 
to those of Persia and Smyrna, and its looms are noted for the 
splendid quality and tone of the silks they weave. Its silver- 
and gold-smiths create exquisite things in filigree that are the 
envy of the jewelers of the world. Its hammered brass adorns 
the homes cf people of every land and clime. Its steel has been 
famous for forty centuries. 

The artisans and shopkeepers of Damascus are shrewder and 
more industrious than the business men anywhere else in the 
Orient. As in Constantinople and other places of Turkey and 
Turkey's dependencies, most of the shops and business estab- 
lishments of Damascus are grouped together under the motherly 
wing of one vast roof, but nowhere el*e are these "bazars" so 
interesting as here; nowhere else is there such a quaint and 
curious conglomeration of races. I happened to be in the 
''bazars" on a Friday and that being the Sabbath or holy day 
of the Mohammedans, the afternoon was a holiday for all the 
craftsmen and they poured into the streets in great numbers. 
Only with difficulty could I push my way through the jostling 
crowds; Greek and Jew merchants were noisily auctioning 
fabrics and Arabs with their heads wrapped in heavy robes and 
legs and feet bare were bidding against each other for the 
articles. 

It was either raining or making an assault with attempt to 
rain the entire time of the two days we spent in this remarkable 
city and the narrow defiles which could only be termed streets 
by the widest stretch of metaphor were sloppy and intensely 
odoriferous. In filthiness and foulness they were in every re- 
spect a counterpart of the streets of Constantinople. On either 
side of the tortuous course of this Broadway the "skyscrapers" 
lifted their square shoulders fully ten feet above the stream of 
humanity that drifted by in bloomers and blouses and fezzes 
and turbans. And, mirable dictu ! an electric car ripped a 
seam in this agitated crazy quilt of men. It had been in opera- 
tion but a short time and was still a novelty to the natives who 
looked upon it with distrust. Electricity and steam in the 



80 Six and One Abroad 

Orient will yet accomplish what missionaries have striven for 
in vain for hundreds of years. A cross between these plunging 
stallions of civilization and the dams of Turkish superstition 
will be a freak at first, but in all events will be an improvement 
on the present stock, and the gradual breeding up will be one 
of the miracles of the twentieth century. Please mark this 
prophecy. 

There are no gongs on the street car of Damascus, but a 
ram's horn is contantly blown by the motorman. Because the 
Mohammedan religion inveighs against bells and gongs these 
sonorous things are never heard in all the great extent of ter- 
ritory that Turkey controls — excepting only Jerusalem where 
Christians are privileged to ring mass bells. There are no bells 
even on the few locomotives that run in and out of Constanti- 
nople, Smyrna and Damascus. There is no music of any kind 
in the myriads of mosques, no sweet sounding instruments in 
their homes, for music, too, is of the devil and is forbidden. In 
all Asia Minor there is no desolation so acute as the dearth of 
melody — of voice and of instrument — only the songs of the birds 
and the occasional note of the unorthodox shepherd in the 
mountains. And there are no pictures, for pictures are a viola- 
tion of the command of God not to make a likeness of any 
created thing. This is especially true of the paintings of ani- 
mals, birds or men, and the Mohammedan who would hang in 
his home the image of any such, be it ever so beautiful, would 
be dealt with severely. For that reason the kodak is looked 
upon with aversion and cannot under any circumstances be 
taken into a mosque. For that reason, too, upon the rugs and 
exquisite fabrics they weave you will never find the interwoven 
outlines of birds or animals, and not even the figures of flowers 
or foliage or vines, but only the incoherent designs of things 
hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. 

The only two side walks in Damascus are on each side of 
the above noted street car street (the streets in the cities of Tur- 
key are never named), and are just wide enough for two Arabs 
but not wide enough for an Arab and an American. I sauntered 
along this avenue with one foot squashing in the mire and the 
other on the walk, noting the queer sights in the winding sue- 



Tivo Rainy Days in Damascus 81 



cession of dens ; Turks making narghalies of cane and cocoanut 
shells; adjoining, perhaps, a khan where camels were fed, and 
odors rushed out; shops where brawny arms were hammering 
brass ; ovens where unclean cooks were preparing slab^ of pastry 
which were to be carried away by boys in their dirty hands 
and sold on the streets; second-hand caravan equipments, 
camel bells and saddles and even second-hand clothing ; groups 
of Turks playing checkers while they sipped coffee or held the 
snake-like stems of narghalies in their mouths; companies gath- 
ered around second-hand iron things spread out for sale in the 
streets; those indecent lavatories in full view where a little 
stream of water issued from the wall and ran down into the 
mud; men and boys spinning silk and linen thread and wind- 
ing it upon bobbins with the most rudimentary contrivances; 
old time looms running it into cloth; wood-workmen sitting on 
their heels, with queer saws and a string attached to them and 
looped around a piece of lumber to do service as a turning lathe ; 
places where Irish potatoes were stored in large quantities, and 
sometimes wheat; and so on. 

A Mohammedan cemetery, the oldest and most noted in 
Damascus, quite in the heart of the city, was a striking sight. 
The graves of this strange city of the dead were so close to- 
gether that there was scarcely standing room between them, 
being mounds of mud and straw, some thirty inches high, with 
an upright monument of mud at the head surmounted with a 
Turkish fez of the same material, if the deceased were a lay- 
man, and by a figure of the headgear peculiar to his station or 
office if he were an official. In a mud house here upon the 
payment of a fee, we were permitted to see the tomb of Fatima, 
daughter of Mohammed, and mother of the most distinguished 
descendants of the Prophet. 

A short drive through a narrow street that was knee deep to 
the horses in mire and filth and vile with offensive scents 
brought us to an old wall, which like so many other things in 
Damascus has held its own for ages against the changes of time. 
Here the odors of the city which had been growing in geometri- 
cal progression reached their climax, and I could not at first 
think of the events of history connected with the spot for the 



Six and One Abroad 



overpowering spectacle of half a dozen huge pyramids of ma- 
nure that riveted attention through the sense of smell. < It was 
the public dumping ground. A native was just then emptying 
a couple of saddle-bags of stuff from the back of a donkey and 
another was alongside our carriage on his way to the forming 
mound on a similar mission. A third was digging into the 
largest pyramid and filling a brace of pouches with the stuff 
for sale to the poorer classes for fuel. On the wall here, where 
it juts out and forms an angle, there is a squatty little house that 
marks the place where St. Paul was let down in a basket by 
his friends to escape the fury of the Jews. The angle, I suppose, 
served to obscure the basket and its occupant from the watch- 
men and make escape possible, and the Apostle's diminutive size 
no doubt enabled him to huddle up securely in the little ele- 
vator. 

Within a stone's throw from this point stands the house of 
Naaman, the leper, the wealthy nobleman who availed himself 
of the services of the prophet Elisha. It will be remembered 
that he raised a vigorous objection to the bath in the muddy 
Jordan prescribed by the Prophet while the clear waters of 
the Abana and Pharpa were rippling by his door at Damascus. 
And that he offered the prophet a bit of baksheesh and was 
surprised at his refusal to accept it. The house is now a home 
for lepers and we were satisfied with a long distance view of it. 

In the same vicinity in what is known as the Christian quar- 
ter, we visited the reputed home of Ananias, not him of the 
unsavory reputation for veracity, but the man of God who was 
told to go to the house of Judas in the Street called Straight 
and there inquire for Saul of Tarsus, who had lost his sight 
that day mysteriously in the glare of the light from heaven. 
The home is underground and its ancient aspect, if nothing else, 
favors its authenticity. I suppose the accumulations and changes 
of 1900 years one way and another will account for the house 
being underground. The preachers accepted it as genuine and 
I went with the majority. It didn't matter much, anyway. 

The Street called Straight is straighter than the letter Z, 
but not as straight as the letter S. Luke was not much given 
to facetious expression, but there is a dash of fun in the way 



Two Bfu'uij Days in Damascus 83 

he speaks of this angular, zigzag and crinkled thoroughfare 
as a "Street called Straight," and as we rode along it for 
a mile the clever turn of his irony was apparent in the many 
crooks and corners. 

The most fanatical Mohammedans in the world are those 
of Damascus, and they hate a Christian like a Russian hates 
a Jew, or a woman another of her kind whom her husband 
says is pretty. I didn't like the looks of the natives of Da- 
mascus a bit ; they were surly, sober and serious and leered 
at us foreigners with a what-business-have-you-got-here expres- 
sion that was not very reassuring. 

We were in the great mosque of the Hyphenated-Arabic- 
Syllables on Friday — that is as near as 1 can translate the 
name of the mosque into English — and were hurried through it 
with expedition, for it was worship day and no strangers were 
allowed during services. We had to wear snow shoes similar 
to the equipment forced upon us in St. Sophia at Constanti- 
nople. They were so much too large that one of them came 
off my foot and without intending any disrespect I took a few 
steps before getting into it again. It was a serious blunder, 
for a watchful guard was upon me in an instant, and I have 
no doubt a repetition of it w^ould have prolonged my stay 
in the city. 

The church stands upon the site of the house of Rimmon 
mentioned in the Bible narrative of the cure of Naaman above 
noted, (so said the preachers and I'll bet on their accuracy 
of Biblical statement), and contains a magnificent shrine 
under which the head of John the Baptist is said to be interred. 
This Bible character has an arm in Malta, his trunk is buried 
in Samaria, and his head in Damascus, but I am sure the sepa- 
ration of his bones occasions no inconvenience now, as the 
great martyr has long ago acquired a new suit of upholstery 
and has no further use for the old. In the court of the mosque 
near the exit stands a mausoleum of Saladin, the Moslem gen- 
eral who crushed the crusades and who was the greatest hero 
of the chivalry of the middle ages. The tomb is of wood 
and is covered with black broadcloth, embroidered with silver, 
and fine cashmere shawls. At the head is a glass globe con- 



84 



Six and One Abroad 




MALCHIZEDEK. 



Two Rainy Days in Damascus 85 

taining the faded bouquet presented by the emperor of Ger- 
many on the occasion of his visit in 1S98. After the emperor's 
return home he sent an ornamental wreath of gold and silver 
to replace the bouquet, but because a Greek cross was a part 
of the design it could not be allowed in the temple. This trouble 
was overcome by the erection of a bay window in the temple 
to contain it. 

The houses of Damascus are diminutive affairs built of mud 
and held together and strengthened with straw. From many 
of them there are projections of wooden sleepers upon which 
bay windows are built. Practically all the residences are flat- 
roofed, furnishing a comfortable place for sleeping in the hot 
summer and a place to hang out the family laundry to dry. 
The streets are narrow and unspeakable channels of mud. If 
there are any gardens in Damascus I did not see them. If 
there are any parks they escaped my most searching investi- 
gation. If there is anything in Damascus to produce a flux 
of flattery such as the tourist writers have who visit the city, 
I did not see it. 

I A\dsh to do Damascus full justice. We were there in the 
middle of March when winter yet dallied in the lap of spring, 
and winter and spring together were making a mess of it. 
The foliage was just peeping from the l)ursting buds. It was 
at its worst, in the rain and in its barrenness, but granting all 
this, it can never be more than a dirty, water-riven foul smell- 
ing city of disreputable houses and people, outspread upon a 
carpet of green, a sight fair enough to the camel-sick traveler 
who has come upon it from the Syrian waste, but not very 
prepossessing to one right off the Bosphorus. Its charms at 
its ])est are comparative and not elementary. 

The view from the mountain on the south, where a suburb 
of closely packed white mud houses have the advantage of an 
elevated position, is good. The city looks better from a dis- 
tance, as all things oriental do. The sun broke from the heavy 
portierres of cloud while we looked, and the city of mud was 
transfigured for a moment into a great brooch of thick set 
pearls pendant from the mountains by the silver Abana. But 
it was only for an instant. From where we stood Mahomet 



86 Six and One Abroad 

saw the white city and said: "It is not permitted to man to 
enter but one paradise and mine is above." And he declined 
to enter upon the scene that fascinated him more than any 
he had ever before beheld. To Mahomet, perhaps, mud was an 
accessory to beauty, and filth no detraction from its charms. 
It is probable that the view from the mountains was splendid 
to Mahomet, just in from the Arabian desert, and he never 
knew what ugly underclothes the pretty overskirts hid from 
his eyes. 

In the distance, some miles away, a little village is dis- 
tinctly visible from the mountain, where Paul was abruptly 
and strenuously converted while on his way to Damascus, 
''breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the dis- 
ciples of the Lord." It was all I could do to prevail upon 
the clerical majority not to undertake the trip to this spot, so 
infatuated were they with the great Apostle and anything by 
the merest inference and conjecture connected with his career. 

A tradition to which all Moslems accede fixes the Garden 
of Eden in this oasis and has the Abana and Pharpa as the 
Euphrates and Tigris of Scripture, and really I am inclined 
with all humility to believe the tradition is correct. It is the 
best opportunity for an Eden in all that section for hundreds 
of miles. Adam is reputed to have hung on the outskirts of 
the oasis after his expulsion and his grave is now upon the 
mountain where we "stood and viewed the landscape o'er." 
I do not claim kinship with any Mohammedan, but I do claim 
a hereditary interest in Adam, and it was with much regret 
that I was unable, owing to limited time, to trace these tradi- 
tions back and verify them. 

Damascus, in rainy weather in March begins with a "Dam" 
and ends with a "cus." It was cold when we were there and 
we had no fire in the hotel and altogether we were most un- 
favorably impressed with the oldest city in the world. 

"We were aroused at half past four in the morning of the 
day of our departure, to take a train for the south, and while 
we stood shivering on the heel of Mahomet, as the site of the 
location of the station is called, a brilliant and most impres- 
sive spectacle charmed us from the eastern skies. The night 



Tivo Rainy Bays in Damascus 87 

had just begun to fold her sable tent like the Arab and silently 
steal aAvay. There was no obstruction of cloud or mist nor 
vague suggestion of either. The morning star, dazzling and in 
the full splendor of its perihelion, negligenth^ irregular, as 
though the hand of God had thrown a bit of plastic glory 
against the blue east wall, glowed and palpitated from its 
place, Avhile the golden crescent moon sought to reach it with 
extended graceful arms. This beautiful picture suggested the 
present ascendency of the Mohammedan religion in the East 
and the supremacy of the Star and Crescent. But in a short 
time the purple and crimson heralds of the King of Day ap- 
peared, and when he arose in majesty and threw all lesser 
lights into eclipse, I thought of the time that is surely coming, 
it may be soon or it may be long, when the sun of the Chris- 
tian religion will arise upon the land of Mohammedanism and 
throw its religion into total and eternal eclipse. 



Six and One Abroad 




CHAPTEE X. 

Lake Galilee and the City of Nazareth. 

A desolation of treeless hills and imwatered valleys stretches 
from the southern limits of the plain of Damascus to the north- 
ern boundary of Galilee, or the Holy Land proper. It is a 
desert, uninhabited save by wanderling bands of Bedouins 
except in an occasional spot where water is found in sufficient 
quantities to sustain a village. The greater part of the country 
lying along the route of the railroad is covered with limestone 
boulders so numerous often that they seem to have been sown 
broadcast. Sometimes a herd of sheep and a lone and lonesome 
keeper relieve the monotony of the waste, and sheepfolds of 
boulders rudely thrown together are its only architecture. 
Caravan roads, those trackless highways that have existed 
unchanged and unimproved since the time of Abraham, wind 
around the mountains and across the "waddies," and anon 
in the distance upon these primitive trails slow moving lines 
of camels may be seen half hidden in the clouds of dust they 
raise. 

The camel is a queer and interesting beast. Grotesque and 
ludicrous in aspect, as dignified as a judge, as pompous and 
haughty as a king, as humble and retiring as a barn roof be- 
hind, with abnormal commissary bumps on his middle and the 
whole superstructure mounted upon a slender and lofty scaf- 
folding, it is difficult to conceive of nature producing such a 
freak in any other light than that of a burlesque. A train of 
these caricatures seen in the distance have the appearance of 
a line of turtles slowly creeping along on stilts. At closer 
range they resemble the ostrich. Near at hand when wearing 
a single bridle rein that drops from the vicinity of the bulging 
eyes in a loop to the hand of the rider, and chewing its cud, 
never did a liarrister with glasses and chain and complacent 
mien look more judicial than this philosopher of the desert. 

At Darat fifty miles out from Damascus, during a delay 
caused by a change of engines, our party started toward a 



90 Six and One Ahroad 

mud town about half a mile distant, which we were informed 
was the capital of the old district of Bashan, noted in the Bible 
for its bulls, saith the majority. On the way we encountered 
several detachments of camels carrying^ bags of wheat from 
the mud village to the railroad station for shipment. We 
held up a section of this transportation line and compelled a 
wee bit of an Arab who was in charge to convey us back to 
the station. The ride was a unique experience. The camel 
has often been called the ship of the desert, and really it has 
all the motions of a ship at sea, and sea sickness inevitably fol- 
lows a long ride upon one of them by a novice. Arriving at 
the station platform, we alighted in a novel manner. At a 
signal from the driver and a jerk at the halter, the camels each 
in turn dropped to their knees and proceeded to fold up like 
a knife until they were settled in a bundle on the ground, en- 
abling us to step off easily from their hurricane decks. 

At Darat the great Haj highway, which the railroad follows 
from Damascus, veers off to the left and proceeds to Mecca. 
This is the route taken once a year by devout Mohammedans 
who desire to visit the birthplace of the prophet, and the pil- 
grimage always begins at the "Heel of the Prophet" in 
Damascus. 

The railroad ran into the mountains shortly after leaving 
Darat and began a circuitous descent toward the valley of the 
Jordan and the Plain of Jezreel. For a distance of fifty miles 
the scenery was as grand as aaiy in the Rockies of America. 
The hills which had been hovering threateningly in our front 
for some time came together at length in an effort to block 
our progress, but we dodged them by perilous leaps and nu- 
merous burrowing and turnings and twistings, and forced an 
entry through and around them until we finally ran into, high 
up against the mountains, a picturesque canyon, in the channel 
of which the Yarmuk foamed and fretted turbulently. Deep 
tributary gorges complained violently at our intrusion and the 
echoes rolled along their abysmal hallways like the lamenta- 
tions of the lost. The mountains manoeuvered in magnificent 
disorder. Not a tree nor a shrub interrupted the graceful 
drapery in which the canyon's sides were clad, but when, as 



Lake Galilee and Nazaretli 91 

was the case soiuetiuies, these emerald cloaks were thrown 
back, fantastic foriualious in stone and strata were disclosed 
— elaborate decorations of weather and strata not unlike the 
friezes and has reliefs of ancient temples. 

After executing' all kinds of loops and bow-knots, and 
threading mountain after mountain through artificial eyes the 
railroad dropped by circuitous gradients to the level of the 
stream. Then the mountains threw open their doors, the echoes 
were quieted, and the train muffled its querulous din out of 
respect for the most hallowed spot and the most beautiful site 
in all the Orient. The hills, recumbent, venerable, sedate, were 
grouped around an esplanade, in the midst of which a river, 
in travail from the northern snows, Avas accouched of a delect- 
able sea. It was Galilee, child of the Jordan, noted in sacred 
story and teeming with sacred memories. 

Of course we left the train here. It was at the close of a 
cloudless day. AVe stood for a few moments in mute admira- 
tion of this beautiful babe of the Jordan and of its cradle of 
mountains, and as we looked, the sun kissed it and left it for 
the night to the enfolding mountains and to us. 

So intent Avere we upon the splendid scene and prospect that 
we did not stop to take note of the disreputable mud town 
that hung like a barnacle on the green bank nor of the slovan 
aborigines who sought to sell us their dirks and cigarette 
boxes as souvenirs of the holy place, but with hurried accord 
flocked to the pier and to the boats that were tethered there 
for a sail upon the pretty loch in the hush of the twilight. 

The more fastidious of the party who left the train here 
took passage in the steamboat, the only vessel of that char- 
acter on the lake, while the inseparable six and one shipped, 
with others, in a large row boat after the manner, we imagined, 
of the craft of Peter and Zebedee's children, the trio of Jews 
who once ran a fishing business here in partnership. (Luke 
V, 19). The oar*men of our little boat were three swarthy 
Mohammedan lads and a gray veteran who acted as mnnager 
and baksheesh collector, all of them diked out in their best 
clothes in honor of our visit. It is worthy of mention, too, 
and should l)e lianded down in history, that their feet were 



92 Six and One Abroad 

clean and their toenails manicured and shining like polished 
tortoise shell. 

When we were well out upon the waters and the boat was 
rising and falling with the rhythmic inflections of the waves 
and the oars splashing with uniform melody, the Arab boat- 
men began to sing in their native tongue, the grave old gentle- 
man forward hymning line after line and the lads chiming 
in after each line with the chorus: "He-ya mana la-ya man." 
I had one of the boys, the most intelligent of the lot, to write 
the chorus in Arabic characters in my notebook, and after- 
wards had it translated by our dragoman into these splendid 
words: "Those who believe in God will be saved." The 
words of the song were not intelligible to us, but the melody 
was of no mean order. At its conclusion our own party, filled 
through and through with the aptness of the tune, broke into 
song and the hills caught up the refrain and repeated it in 
musical echoes : 

"Oh, Galilee, sweet Galilee, 
Come sing thy song again to me." 

In the gathering darkness, with every noted sight out of 
view, the incidents of early Christian history so many of which 
occurred on the shores of this beautiful lake, seemed to come 
to us liked winged messages from those vague and distant 
times, and were almost as distinct as a present and visual 
reality. Did the Christ, upheld by an unseen hand, walk upon 
these waters when they threatened His disciples? It was here 
that the demonstration of His divinity was made. Did the 
disciples grow disheartened in their efforts to land a lunch of 
fish from the water? It was here that the Christ supplemented 
their weakness with His omnipotence. Did the Great Teacher 
grow tired in His humanity when the need}^ and astonished 
throngs sought His services continually? It was upon the 
bosom of this lake that He found the succor of privacy and 
rest. 

It was dark when we landed at Tiberias, after a sail of six 
miles, and in a monastery of the Greek church, one of the few 
clean and airy buildings of the town, we found lodging for the 
night. 



Lake Galilee and Nazaretli 93 

Tiberias has a population of 8,000, and is the only survivor 
of the numerous cities that existed around Galilee in the time 
of Christ. It was founded by Herod Antipas, a tetrarch of 
Galilee, as a pleasure resort and his palace was its principal 
feature. His brother Philip had built a city and called it after 
the daughter Caesar, and Herod in a spirit of greater servility 
built this one and called it after Caesar himself. During its 
con.struction a Jewish cemetery was disturbed and for that 
reason no Jews would ever live in or enter the city. Christ 
himself never visited it, though most of His life was spent in 
its vicinity. Herod was a dissolute old Avretch, and among his 
many improper acts he conceived an attachment for Herodias, 
his sister in law, though he was married at the time to an 
attractive daughter of an Arab sheik. The law would not per- 
mit a second marriage, nevertheless he brought the woman, 
Herodias, with her consent, into his home, and thereupon his 
wife indignantly packed her wardrobe and returned to her 
father's home in the mountains. The old sheik, in resentment 
of the insult to his daughter, gathered his clans and made war 
upon Herod, pressing his army so close that he was forced to 
move to his castle a.t Macherus, near the Dead Sea. At this 
juncture John the Baptist, in a series of out-door sermons, was 
taking Herod severely to task for his adultery. Herod himself 
cared little for the criticism, but Herodias demanded John's 
arrest, and Salome, her daughter, requested and secured his 
head. An interesting sequel to this story is to the effect that 
Salome married a Roman general, who was afterwards trans- 
ferred to Spain, and that while skating on the ice of a river 
there, she fell through and her head was severed from her body 
by the sharp edges of the ice. This may or may not be true ; 
it is immaterial now. 

I stood in the early morning on the pier that juts out into 
the lake at Tiberias, in company with several ladies and among 
a number of Arabs of both sexes who had been fishing and had 
just brought in the results of their operations. The fish, of a 
uniform size and weight, were dumped on the pier in a pal- 
pitating mound several feet high. This was the city market, 
and a brisk business in live fish was being done. The natives 



94 



Six and One Abroad 




Lake Galilee and Nazareth 95 

came in tlirong.s. The scales used were a primitive affair, and 
the weights were rocks of different sizes. 

The morning was damp and exceedingly chilly. The natives 
had their heads and trunks swarthed in an abundance of cloth, 
hut their shins and feet were bare. Presently a stalwart Arab 
removed his headgear and laid it aside, then untied his girdle 
and dropped it, and was in the act of taking off the only remain- 
ing garment, when it occurred to the lady visitors that it was 
time to return to the hotel. They had scarcely turned their 
back when the scalawag stripped stark naked, and unabashed 
in the presence of the women and children of his o\\ti kind, 
plunged into the water. He was back shortly with his skiff 
and offering to take us for an ante-breakfast ride. 

Til)erias is a typical Arab and Turkish town ; that is, it is 
unclean and offensive, and the inhabitants are about as low 
in the scale of civilization as mankind ever gets. It was a 
supreme delight to leave the fetid streets and to embark in 
row boats upon the pure bosom of the waters and under skies 
neither of which the degradation of man could contaminate. 

Directly across on the opposite side, in the edge of a desert 
place, was the locality where Jesus fed the 5,000, while the throng 
sat upon the grass and wondered at the multiplication of the 
menu. To the right were the hills where the swine, inoculated 
with the devils of the Gadarene lunatic, ran down into the 
sea and were choked. 

To the left, through a depression in the basin. Mount Hermon, 
white wath snow from summit to base and forty-five miles away, 
was visible. A mass of ruins on the northern slope where the 
mountains once retired to give place to a great city was all 
that was left of Capernaum, the home of Christ when He lived 
by the sea. Verily the curse that he pronounced upon it for 
infidelity and wickedness, has been literally fulfilled: ''It shall 
be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judg- 
ment than for Capernaum." 

Bethsaida and Chorazin have completely vanished, without 
a wreck or ruin to tell the story of their desolation, and the 
home of jMary Magdalene, called Magdala, were better extinct 



96 Six and One Abroad 

than to have declined to the level to which the Bedouins have 
brought it now. 

As we cruised from point to point it seemed somehow unreal 
and as if we were in a mystic barque in fancyland. And yet 
the stirring scenes on this the frontier of Christianity assumed a 
reality that we had never known before, and it was not hard 
to rehabilitate the dead cities and people them with the cos- 
mopolitan throngs of the gospel. It was a consoling thought, 
too, that while squalor and superstition had violated most of 
the sacred places of the Holy Land, virgin Galilee had not sur- 
rendered her chastity. The lake is thirteen miles long, four to 
six miles wide and 680 feet below the sea level. In the sum- 
mer the atmosphere becomes very humid at times, and the 
rapid evaporation develops sudden squalls such as came upon 
the disciples when Jesus was taking a nap "in the hinder part 
of a ship on a pillow." (Mark 4:38.) 

Speaking of squalls, we had an experience with one when 
we were preparing to leave the lake for Nazareth. Melchizedek 
(such was our abbrevation of the unpronouncable name of our 
dragoman) had provided hacks and teams for our conveyance, 
and we had occupied them and were waiting his pleasure to 
go. But the commissary stores had been delayed somehow, and 
when they appeared presently, Melchizedek and another son of 
Esau, his assistant, at once went into a state of violent physical 
and verbal eruption. Red hot sulphurous Arabic flew thick and 
fast ; they shook each other and all but came to blows ; they 
screamed and grew red in the face ; and it was apparent that 
one of them would soon draw a deadly knife and plunge the 
blade deep into the other's vitals. Every man in the party 
jumped out and ran to separate them, and then, seeing our 
alarm, the belligerants subsided abruptly and broke into laugh- 
ter. Melchizedek explained that they were not mad, were not 
even quarreling, but only consulting as to the proper vehicle 
in which to store the provisions. That is the Arab's way. I 
have seen them fuss to the ragged edge of murder many times, 
but never yet have I seen them fight, much as I hoped they 
would sometimes. 

It is six hours from Tiberias to Nazareth. Distance in the 



Lake Galilee and Nazareth 97 

East is computed l\y time and not by lineal measurement, and 
time is regulated by the donkey, whose gait is as regular as 
the swing of a pendulum. The ascent of the mountain over- 
hanging Galileo consumed two hours' time, during which one 
of our vehicles overturned, horses, hack and four Catholic 
priests executing a complete somersault without an injury or 
scratch, but which developed another tempest of words be- 
tween jMelchizedek and the driver, which was worse. 

The soil of Galilee is a rich mucilaginous loam of chocolate 
color and as fertile as the delta of the Nile. The natives tickle 
it with a caricature they call a plow and it smiles with a rip- 
pling wealth of grain. The valleys at the time of our visit 
were veritable hanging gardens of green and brown, the moun- 
tains being the velvet covered supports from which they swung, 
and the whole irregular undulating surface was literally cov- 
ered with white and crimson anemones — the scriptural lilies 
of the valley. In the midst of this landscape of chromatic 
fields, of emerald cones and devious vales and glade:?:, a few 
miles out from Galilee, the Mount of Beatitudes rose superbly. 

I had seen cathedrals until recollection of them was a night- 
mare — they were all so frightfully melancholy and oppressive, 
so suggestive of the tomb — and what a relief it was to stand 
in God's own cathedral in Galilee, with its nave of light and 
transept of tlowers, its dome the outstretched canopy of the 
sky, its incense the swinging cups of the lilies of the valley, 
its light the golden radiant sun, and its floors spread wdth a 
carpet woven by invisible looms ! From a pulpit here Jesus 
spoke the incomparal)le sermon on the mount, a deliverance in 
which there is more condensed wisdom than in any that ever 
fell from the lips of man. 

Our reveries at this point were abruptly dissipated by a 
bunch of blue-shirted children who came on the run mysteri- 
ously from somewhere with extended hands for baksheesh, and 
an irreverent old pilgrim jumped upon a rock and quoted that 
beautiful invitation of Jesus: ''Suffer little children to come 
unto Me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." 

At noon we halted at a pond for lunch, and while we were 
struggling with leather-upholstered chicken legs and petrified 



98 



Six and One Abroad 



rye bread, Mielchizedek mounted a boulder and explained as 
near as we could make it out, that a man by the name of Con- 
rad, who was a ''Sherman," led a crusade through this sec- 
tion of country, and that the Turks whittled on him at the 
spot where we were stopping, until nothing was left of him 
but a toe nail and a jaw tooth. That was the literal transla- 
tion of his harangue and explanatory gestures. Melchizedek 




WATER JUGS, NAZARETH. 



was an accomplished linguist; he prided himself on his ability 
to speak nine different languages; and he could, bat the trou- 
ble was he spoke them all at the same time. He wore a gorge- 
ous robe on this trip which he claimed was given him by Em- 
peror William for carrying his cigarette box during his visit 
in 1898. We have never yet seen a dragoman in the Holy Land 
Mdio did not figure conspicuously in the retinue of the emperor 
at that time. 

Emperor William's visit was a god-send to Palestine. Roads 



Lake Galilee and Nazareth 99 



were repaired for the first time in 1,972 years; bridges were 
built, and city streets were cleaned. A fine road from Nazareth 
to the "bloody pool" where we dined, was built by the sultan 
for his royal guest, and we certainly enjoyed it after flounder- 
ing, bumping and churning through the mud from Tiberias. 

Two hours before reaching Nazareth we came upon the vil- 
lage of Cana, where at a wedding Jesus performed his first 
miracle. It is a hamlet of the usual cluster of mud huts with- 
out windows or apertures, the same never-swept lanes, the same 
sore-eyed aggregation of human nondescripts. A Catholic 
chapel stands over the ruins of an old house claimed to be the 
home where the marriage occurred. There is a fountain in 
the midst of it and an altar over which there is a display of 
Latin, a part of which translated is: "What God has joined 
together let not man put asunder." The Greek priests have 
the place located in a different part of town, and in their 
chapel are two of the very stone jars that contained the vine 
that blushed when Jesus spoke. You pay your money and 
take your choice. 

A little rock house, in this vicinity, cross-crowned, marks the 
alleged spot where Nathaniel lived. An English mission is a 
bright resort where we saw a school of Arab urchins with 
clean noses and heard them sing the songs of Him who was 
their Savior as well as ours. 

The road left Cana through a lane of cactus hedges and coiled 
upward through the mountains, a long white serpentine stretch 
of natural pavement, until it reached Nazareth, the boyhood 
home of Jesus. 

There we ran into a nest of superstition and religious fool- 
ishness. But the town was so clean and the inhabitants so much 
more intelligent than any we had seen in this part of the 
moral vineyard that we fell in love with it. The houses were 
built of stone and there was an air, a little whiff at least, of 
civilization about the place. 

We spent the night at a monastery, a three-story structure 
capable of accommodating 300 guests and operated by monks 
in brown robes, shaved heads and long beards, Franciscans I 
think. 



100 Six and One Abroad 

Nazareth is situated liigh up in the mountains and contains 
a population of about 10,000. Its location is determined by 
a great spring known as Mary's Fountain. Springs are the 
town builders of the Bast; let this one at Nazareth cease to 
flow and the population would decamp before sundown, and 
the buildings would quickly lapse into decay. At this foun- 
tain we saw the life of our Savior's city; women washing; 
others carrying jars of water atilt on their heads ; children at 
play in the mud; and men leading camels and donkeys to the 
trough beneath the spouting stream. It is the hub of the town ; 
its assembly grounds. 

Along narrow winding streets we were led by Melchizedek 
to the various points of interest, first visiting the Church of 
the Annunciation, a Catholic institution over the spot where 
they believe the Virgin was notified of her mission by the angel 
G-abriel. There are really ruins of an ancient house in this 
place that may have been the home of Mary and Joseph, a 
flight of steps leading down into it. A cave it is, more than 
a residence. Here, in what is called the Chapel of the Angel, 
we were shown a marble slab worn deep with kisses of the 
believing through the ages, indicating the spot where the an- 
nouncing angel stood, and a marble column is miraculously 
suspended from the ceiling where Mary sat when she heard 
the news. The ''Kitchen of the Virgin" is a dark cavern where 
Mary prepared the family meals. The Greek Orthodox people 
have a rival annunciation place at the Spring. And so again 
we are forced to arbitrate between these factions. The preachers 
I think decided in favor of the Latins, and I will not dissent. 

It makes no difference what little old underground joint was 
the real exact place of the Savior's abode when he was a citizen 
of Nazareth. It is enough that the hills are the same, the 
flowers the same family of bright spirits that welcomed Him as 
He passed among them. Perhaps some of the natives them- 
selves are descendants of Jesus. There is always a great deal 
of sentiment in a spring, a bubbling spring. Youthful fancies 
and foibles are associated intimately with such places, and any 
man whose early life does not involve a spring as well as a wash 
hole deserves sympathy. It is boyhood's trysting place; the 



Lake Galilee and Nazareth loi 



source of consolation after heated spasms of play; the rendez- 
vous of plotting juvenile clans. Wonder if Jesus used to sit 
on the rocks of this fine old spring of Nazareth and splash His 
feet in the water and plan boyish pranks with his associates. I 
guess He did, for there is nothing un-divine in any of it. It is 
certain that He drank from it thousands of times. 



CHAPTER XI. 

From Joppoi to Jerusalem. 

"Hail-ee, Hail-ee, El-oo-Eezer." 

This was the chorus of the song of the boatmen who piloted 
us over the mischievous waves from our steamer, two miles 
out, to the landing at Joppa. It meant: "Hail, Hail to Jesus," 
and was sung by bare-foot, turbaned, baggy-trousered Moham- 
medans as a kind cf welcome to us to the land where the author 
of Christianity lived. Our visit meant piasters to them and 
therefore, and therefore only, were we welcome. 

Joppa is an old town and is now, as it was in the time of 
Solomon, the shipping port of Jerusalem and Palestine. It was 
from Joppa that Jonah sailed on his truancy from duty, bound 
for Tarshish (now Cadiz, Spain), and in the Mediterranean 
somewhere nearby he had his three days submarine outing in 
the commissary department of a great sea fish especially pre- 
pared for his accommodation. 

It was at Joppa that Peter saw the vision that impressed 
upon him the universal scope of Christianity. If tradition be 
true, I saw the house of Simon the Tanner, and stood on the 
flat roof where Peter saw "heaven opened and a certain vessel 
descending unto him as it had been a great sheet knit at the 
four corners, wherein were all manner of four-footed beasts 
and creeping things." It is a very old place "by the seaside," 
and could very well, so far as appearances go, be the identical 
home of the hospitable tanner. Confirmatory evidence is found 
also in the fact that that part of the town is even today occu- 
pied by numerous tanneries, many of them no doubt with a 
lineage running back to the days of the apostles. 

Sore eyes seem to be epidemic in Joppa and blindness 
and defective sight the rule to which there are few 
exceptions. Melchizedek explained that this affliction of his 
race was due to the glare of the sun upon the limestone rocks, 
but a better reason is found in their personal uncleanliness. I 
think I have in this series of letters somewhere intimated that 



From Joppa to Jerusalem 103 

the towns of Turkey and Syria are dirty and foul. If so I will 
merely ditto Joppa in that respect. 

Picking our way among assorted nuisances from Simon's 
house, with trousers upturned and skirts hoisted, beggars in 
all stages of misery and deformity blocking our progress and 
even appealing to us from upstairs windows with extended 
hands, we proceeded by way of an enclosed passage, such as 
are seen so often in the East, to an open square where the sun 
beat down upon hundreds of indolent squatting natives and 
drove every insinuating odor back into the alleys. Here oranges 
in large quantities were on sale in little chicken coop shops, 
and their buxom, rotund and cheerful forms contrasted agree- 
ably with the tawdry other stuff that was on sale. 

Nowhere have we seen a more refreshing sight than the orange 
groves of Joppa. This particular section is well favored for the 
gjrowing not only of oranges, but also of lemons, dates, apri- 
cots, pomegranates, and figs, and tropical vegetation of almost 
every variety flourishes luxuriantly, for a few feet under the 
surface of the soil there is an inexhaustible supply of water. 
The hotel at which we stopped was located in a tropical garden 
where parrots sc^uawked in the rank foliage and pet monkeys 
s^^■^mg from the trees. Perfumed zephyrs swept the prome- 
nades, and everything was lovely except at such times as we 
chanced to stroll upon the streets and encountered the semper 
sideant and sore-eyed populace. 

A queer feature of the life of the city was the goatskin ves- 
sels used for the transportation of water. A native was filling 
one of these vessels at the well of the house of Simon the 
Tanner while we were there. It was the entire hide of a 
black goat, minus only the head and tail, sewed together. AVhen 
being filled at the neck end, the billy showed signs of coming 
to life, the sides expanding, the legs becoming rigid, and the 
thing when full looked like a bloated cadaver a week old. No 
water for us in Joppa; we sucked oranges instead. 

A tomb reputed to be that of Tabitha, and the room where 
Peter "gave her his hand and lifted her up, and it was known 
throughout all Joppa and many believed in the Lord," are pre- 
served in the Greek church here. 



104 



Six and One Abroad 




GOAT SKIN VESSELS. 



Fro)u Jopp'i to JcrKsaleni 105 

But Joppa was strictly an accidental stop and both the cleri- 
cal and lay members of our party tolerated it only until time for 
the train to leave for Jerusalem. 

A railroad from Jcppa to Jerusalem ! Did any prophet or 
seer cf the old days, any judge or king, any but Christ himself 
foresee such a road of steel? And did any but He ever forsee 
a steam-winged caravan upon the rocky waste where Goliath 
fought and fell and David wielded his sling, and Samson plied 
his mighty muscle and loved and wrought his own destruction? 

What a bedlam of noise at the railroad station ! AVhat a 
medley of curious costumes and people ! The whirling car- 
riages with antique drivers and modern passengers ; the brown 
porters in their immensity of breeches tottering under tower- 
ing loads of trunks; natives tugging at bundles in the hands 
of prssengers and begging for an opportunity to earn a tip; 
the train men excited and explosive ; the women ghosts in pairs 
and groups peering over white face-scarfs at the strange dress 
of their Western sisters. And over the whole tumult and mix- 
ture a family of palms holding their plumed umbrellas. I 
should have said our own party was scarcely less excited and 
noisy than the natives outside. The long expected was about 
to happen ; Jerusalem was only four hours away. Anticipa- 
tion was boiling in every vein and sizzling on every lip. 

We are off. 

For a couple of miles we run through a belt of orange groves 
where the trees are bending under burdens of golden globes 
and the air is fragrant with the breath of flowers. Then we 
enter the Plain of Sharon, where wheat and fresh sod alter- 
nate in a checkerboard of green and brown rectangles, the same 
beautiful variety all the way to thi^ distant purple hills; camels 
are pulling obsolete plows in the sun swept fields, and gay- 
robed, bare-legged natives are guiding the meandering curiosities 
with one hand on the single handle and the other gripping a 
goad. We know now why the Savior spoke of putting the 
''hand" and not the "Lands" to the plow. This is every whit 
sacred ground, once the home of the Philistines and the battle- 
field where Israel strove for its possession. On the summit 
of vender hill a monastery marks the site of Zora, the birth- 



106 Six and One Abroad 

place of Samson. Eucalyptus trees in a parallel follow a cara- 
van road, the great highway from Syria to Egypt, where it 
crosses our route at right-angles, and hedges of cactus divide 
the little farms. Intermittent hamlets of mud, their roofs ver- 
dant with the spring growth of grass, and each with a single 
minaret to relieve the monotony of its scant architecture, soil 
the comely surface of the plain. Now we pass the village of 
Ramleli, the reputed home of Joseph of Aramathea, and a 
crowd of children offer bunches of brilliant nosegays for a 
penny and a basket of oranges for a piaster (6 cents). 

After thirty miles of level surface, the whole of it in culti- 
vation, the plain begins to slope upward to the mountains and 
the green foothills are radiant with lilies-of-the-valley and roses 
of Sharon, with now and then a vineyard and a watch tower. 
Occasionally a hill Math less of rock and more of soil is ter- 
raced to the top with baby vineyards ; on a ledge of rock high 
up a stork solemnly awaits the opportunity to drop an Arab 
kidlet or a hawk scans the honey-combed hill for a hare. Mel- 
chizedek passes through the car and pompously announces our 
arrival at a station where the Philistines kept the Ark of the 
Covenant during the time it was in their possession, and we 
get out for a '^ stretch" and observation. 

The engine has made this stop to catch its wind for the pull 
to Jerusalem, which from now on is exceedingly steep. With 
a shrill screech of confidence, it plunges immediately into a 
canyon and the reverberation multiplies against the overhang- 
ing hills. We are now in a dry rocky channel and will follow 
it fifteen miles to its source in the hills of the holy city. Mel- 
chizedek, omniscient on all points of biblical topography, has 
Mr. McCurdy, the Pittsburg Irishman who joined us miracu- 
lously at Joppa after an absence of two weeks on other trips^ 
to open the Scriptures at the sixteenth and seventeenth chap- 
ters of I. Samuel and read the story of the battle between the 
Philistines and the Israelites, of David and his journey from 
Bethlehem, and of his unequal duel with Goliath and its sur- 
prising result. Right here in this channel, says he, is where 
the thrilling events occurred, and from this brook he took the 
fatal pebble; on the mountain side here the contending hosts 



From Joppa to Jerusalem 107 

were gathered. How contracted the fighting space, fit only for 
a battle with spears and bows, or for a railroad track, or for 
goats, numbers of which are crawling like black ants high up 
on the rocky slopes yonder. 

And now at last, after many a turn and many a groan of 
complaining wheels, the little engine is panting in the suburbs 
of a town. No one has announced it, but the noisy multitude 
of hack-men, the imposing aggregation of limestone houses, can 
have but one meaning — we are at Jerusalem. 

The sun has set, and from a cab driven by a reckless Jehu 
we glimpse the old city in silhouette against the gray evening 
sky. And now it is in full view across the deep valley — a con- 
fusion of Avhite rock and steeples and domes cramped within 
enclosing walls, while a generous overflow of structures of every 
shape and color runs down into the valley and clings to the 
slopes of adjacent hills. It is beautiful; it could not be other- 
wise in such a commanding location. In the awe of twilight 
it seems like a vision — a resurrection of history — and as we 
behold and dream and recall, the pathetic lamentation of Jesus 
comes to us in memory : ' * Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that 
killest the prophet and stonest them that are sent unto thee, 
how often would I have gathered thy children together even 
as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings and ye would 
not. Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." 



CHAPTEE XII. 

A Jerusalem Hotel. 

The Holy Land is one of the favorite objective points of 
travel; not, indeed, of that vast annual migratory host that 
ebbs and flows with the seasons in quest of pleasure ; but of 
that lesser and more substantial and sensible contingent which 
finds its pleasure in observation of historic places. Pleasure 
turns up its nose at Palestine. 

It was the time in the calendar of travel when visitors are 
most numerous in Jerusalem. Accommodations were ^scarce, 
and in lieu of anything better we secured quarters at the Notre 
Dame de France, an enormous building just outside the walls, 
the largest in Jerusalem with the exception of the Russian 
Hospice. 

It was the rainy season and the weather, while not severely 
cold, was exceedingly penetrating and disagreeable, Jerusalem's 
great altitude bringing out all the rigor there is in a winter 
or early spring. 

The hotel was of stone without a single bit of wood anywhere 
in its composition that we were able to discover. I doubt if 
there is enough lumber in all the houses of the city of Jerusa- 
lem to build a chicken coop. The floors were stone, weather- 
stained stone; the walls were unplastered stone exuding damp- 
ness at every pore ; the ceilings were clammy stone ; the stairs — 
steps and railings — hard unfeeling stone; our bed itself was 
an assault and battery of stone. 

There was no stove in any of the 300 rooms, for M^hich de- 
linquency, however, there was a good excuse in the price of 
wood which was 35 cents a pound and nothing but olive roots 
to be had at that price. 

A tallow candle tinted the darkness of our den with the faint- 
est suggestion of a light. 

The hotel, in fact, was a monastery that served as a religious 
hermitage half the year and during the other half was converted 
into an inn, the monks retaining a wing for themselves. These 



A Jerusalem Hotel 



109 



Franciscans took possession of the adjacent garden dnring in- 
tervals of sun, and when flitting about or sitting in their long 
black robes and hoods looked like phantom creations of Dore. 

Nine American priests were our companion guests, and a 
jollier set of fellows never went abroad. A separate table in 
the dining hall was assigned to them and to us and a couple 
of ladies who were sisters to as many of the priests. 

Now a Jerusalem bill of fare is a curious collection of dishes. 




IN THE GARDEN OF NOTRE DAME— THE NINE PRIESTS AND OTHERS. 

Breakfast is a mere formality, consisting of coffee, which is 
coffee in name and not in substance, and a baseball bat that 
serves the purpose of bread. Luncheon and dinners are more 
substantial and edible entities, three varieties of meat being 
served at these two meals. Usually we had goat chops, the 
violently aromatic oriental kind, sometimes camel — a palatable 
piece of hump or a slice of the receding rear. On one occasion 
porterhouse was served, but it had a peculiar grain and the 
consistency of caoutchouc. Our waiter was a Turk who was 



110 



Six and One Abroad 



supposed to speak English, and could almost do so at times, 
and when we requested him to translate the meat into English 
he explained that it was donkey porterhouse, whereupon one 
of the Catholic fathers humorously observed: "Ladies and 
gentlemen, let us bray." 




IN A SHEIK'S COSTUME IN A JERUSALEM PHOTO GALLERY. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Bctlilelicm and the Manger. 

It was a suggestion of the priests that we see Jerusaelm and 
vicinity in chronological conformity with the New Testament 
story, and we readily assented to the arrangement, but we never 
did, not in a single instance did we ever get up early enough 
to join the fathers in a visit to any of the sacred places. They 
were always diligently up with the five o'clock matin bells and 
off to mass somewhere, continuing thence their program for 
th,e day. 

In agreement with the chronological program and ignorant 
until the time to start on the journey that our Catholic friends 
had gone on ahead in the wee small hours to mass service, we 
arranged before seeing the city, so full of interesting sights 
and so hallowed by history— to visit first the birthplace of 
Him who was its central figure and greatest personality. In- 
cidentally, the chronological sequence was broken after this 
first trip, for the protestant majority seceded into an excur- 
sion into Samaria and left ]\TcCurdy and me without benefit 
of clergy, to see Jerusalem with unorthodox eyes. 

Bethlehem was four miles distant to the south, and the road 
led to it over the backbone of a mountain — a splendid road of 
natural pavement of rock. For this trip we engaged the serv- 
ices of a new guide. We regretted to part with Melchizedek — 
he was so interesting, and we had become attached to him, but 
he had another engagement and was not available. 

This latest acquisition was a dignified Syrian in European 
dress, with the exception of a bright red fez that decorated 
the terminus of his tall form. His name was a quadruple- 
jointed title that we could not pronounce, and so we dubbed 
him Jehoshaphat for short. 

Jehoshaphat rode with the driver, and at all points of in- 
terest slowly and pompously doled out his valuable informa- 
tion. A carob tree by the roadside he averred to be the va- 
rietv that bore the husks "the swine did eat" and with which 



112 



Six and One Ah road 




Bethlehem and the Manger 113 

the prodigal son woukl fain have filled his stomach. We had 
a kind of Sunday School notion that the prodigal son was 
driven to the necessity of eating corn husks, and he had there- 
fore always had our earnest sympathy. But notwithstanding 
the revision of our opinion of his diet, the wayward boy is 
still entitled to some commisseration, for the carob husk is 
about as unpalatable as a liveoak acorn. 

Three miles out we came upon a little patch of ground lit- 
erally covered with pebbles, Avhich Jehoshaphat claimed were 
miraculously produced. According to his story, a man was 
sowing seed broadcast on the spot and Jesus, passing by, asked 
him what he was sowing. The man insolently replied that he 
was sowing stones, and Jesus, to punish him for his imperti- 
nence, actually turned the seeds to stones. The fact that this 
does not appear in Scripture threw some doubt upon it in 
our minds, but Jehoshaphat insisted that the stones were there 
to speak for themselves. 

From the top of the hill the town of Bethlehem came into 
sight. A considerable village it was, and quite picturesque. 
To the left, deep down in a narrow valley half covered with 
rocks was the site of the field of Boaz, where Ruth went a- 
gleaning and a-husband-hunting ; and here squarely by the 
roadside was the tomb of Rachel, the favorite wife of Jacob. It 
will be remembered that she died at Bethlehem while Jacob was 
en route to Hebron. The tomb is an imj^osing one, and there is 
little reason to doubt its authenticity. 

Bethlehem has a population of 8,000, though you would not 
think it from a distance. Ten people live in a space in the 
East that would be stuffy quarters for a single American. 
Everything is on a small scale. We drove along a narrow lane 
of rock houses until we came to an open square, where the 
entire population of the town seemed to be collected. Leaving 
the carriage we were conducted by Jehoshaphat, we ignorantly 
supposed, to the great attraction of Bethlehem, for he led us 
in devious paths, along by munching camels and through crowds 
packed compactly in the streets to — not the Manger, but a 
curio shop. The impudent rascal. It was with the greatest 
difficulty that we could restrain an impulse to hurl him from 



114 



Six and One Abroad 




BethJeliem and the Manger 115 

yonder cliff down into Boaz' field. Had we come all the way 
across the ocean and a sea to buy an olive pin tray or a mnssel 
shell scarf pin? 

It was only three minutes to the church of the Nativity. The 
front of this edifice was a high blank wall of indifferent con- 
struction, and the entrance a doorway so small and unpreten- 
tious that it appeared to be an accidental hole that the builders 
forgot. Stooping low, we entered and groped along a narrow 
passage way till we stood with uncovered heads inside an old 
chapel that was erected by Constantine away back in 330. The 
floor was of rock, worn concave and irregular by the tramp of 
millions of feet ; its columns were monoliths that had been 
slicked and soilcid by millions of hands. Its solemn and ven- 
erable aspect was emphasized by the darkness and even by the 
light that was strained into a faint glow through the trans- 
lucent transoms. 

The church is owned by no one, unless it be by the Turkish 
government, which keeps a guard of soldiers on hand to pre- 
vent the Christian sects from flying at each other's throats as 
they have done more than once. The Roman Catholics, the 
Orthodox Greeks and Armenians are assigned certain portions 
of the floor space over which they may spread their rugs, hang 
their lamps and burn their candles, and to encroach upon for- 
bidden territory is a crime that calls for arrest. 

Jehoshaphat pointed to a nail in the wall. Some years ago 
the Latins put it there for the purpose of hanging a picture. 
The Greeks objected and a furious riot followed. The Turkish 
soldiers quelled the disturbance and set a sentry to watch the 
nail. To extract it would be to take sides with the Latins, 
and so it remains as a sad reminder of the bitterness of the 
rival sects, and the little foolish nail is watched as carefully 
now as are the transgressions upon the forbidden floor space. 

A short flight of steps leads to a grotto, the stable where 
Joseph and Mary stopped for want of room in the inn, and 
where the most memorable event in history occurred, unless 
the event of Calvary thirty-three years later be more important. 
Half a hundred quaint lamps of olive oil are burning dimly 
there. Under an altar a silver star laid in the pavement marks 



116 Six and One Abroad 




JEHOSHAPHAT. 



Bethleliem and the Manger 117 

the alleged exact spot whore the Savior was born, announced 
in these Latin words: "Hie de Virgine Maria Jesus Cliristns 
Natus est." The Latins own the star, while the Greeks control 
the place of the manger a few feet to one side. The manger 
itself, genuine or fraudulent, was removed hundreds of years 
ago to Rome and is preserved there to this day in a Catholic 
cathedral. The place where it lay is a niche in the rock lined 
with marble and is almost concealed by a profusion of lamps, 
tinseled trappings and wire grating. 

There is ver^' little room to doubt that this is the spot where 
Jesus was born, and that He lay in the very manger there. 
We know that the location of Bethlehem is the same today as 
then; we know that Jesus was born in a stable and that the 
stable was connected with a cave ; we know that there is but one 
cave in the village ; and so the chain of evidence is complete. 
In addition to this chain of physical circumstances, St. Jerome 
who officed in the grotto for thirty years in the fourth cen- 
tury, asserted positively that it was the birthplace of the Sav- 
ior. 

The tomb of Jerome is cut in the solid rock and the faithful 
old Christian has been asleep there for 1600 years. 

In the grotto adjoining the tomb of Jerome is shown the 
Chapel of the Innocents, where several thousand of the little 
ones are said to have been butchered by Herod (Matthew 2:16). 

Outside once again, it was a short walk to the crest of a hill 
on the outskirts of the village, whence we looked down upon 
the little plain where the shepherds are said to have received 
"the good tidings of great joy." 

And then to David's well. It will be remembered that 
Bethlehem was the home of David ; that it later fell into the 
hands of the Philistines, and that David craved a drink from 
it much as we today crave a drink out of the gourd from the 
old spring of our boyhood. These are his words : ' ' Oh, that 
one would give me a drink of the water of Bethlehem which 
is by the gate." 

The curio venders of Bethlehem waste enough energy to con- 
vert every goat path in Judea into a railroad. They sell every- 
thing that can be made out of chalky rock or mother of pearl, 



118 Six and One Abroad 

and all but knock you down and force you to buy. One article 
they sell I am inclined to believe is a fraud. A hill near the 
cavern of the manger is said to have been permeated by milk 
from the overflowing breasts of Mary and thereby became sanc- 
tified. For centuries there has been a superstition among the 
women of the town that a fragment of this rock dissolved in 
milk or water will promote fertility and increase the flow of 
mother's milk. The sale of these tablets is one of the leading 
industries of the town. 

Most of the inhabitants of Bethlehem are believers in Christ 
— I will not say they are all Christians. There are less than 
one hundred Mohammedans, and Jews are not allowed to reside 
there — an unwritten law that the Jews do not dare to violate. 
The women are rather attractive ; they are cleanly, and what 
a delight it was to feast our eyes upon a native woman of the 
Holy Land who was not ashamed of her face, whose countenance 
and feet were clean, hair given some attention, and who wore 
clean and neat fltting clothes. The married women have a tow- 
ering headgear that is not unbecoming. Then, too, it is a cus- 
tom for the young ladies to wear their dowries on their fore- 
heads — their fortune, their separate property; those who do this 
are the aristocrats of Bethlehem, and well may they be envied, 
for the string of coins upon a feminine brow often amounts 
to as much as three dollars and six-bits. 

Bethlehem is clean — not exactly as clean as a horse lot, but 
cleaner than a livery stable, and that is more than can be said 
of any other town I have seen in the Orient so far. And there 
is not an unsavory odor in the town. It is pleasing to know 
that the Home of David, the place where the romance of Ruth 
was enacted and the motherlj^ Rachel lies sleeping and Jesus 
was born, is in the hands of the most intelligent and industrious 
little colony of people in Palestine. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

Inside the Walls of Jerusalem. 

There is no sleeping after five o'clock in the morning in Je- 
rusalem, for at that early hour an epidemic of prematnre mel- 
ody breaks out in a dozen or maybe a score of places, and no- 
where else, unless it be in Rome, is there such another jangling 
nuisance of pounding bells. Thus awakened on the first morn- 
ing, I arose and ascended the lofty tower of the Notre Dame, 
where the loudest of the bells had been ringing, and looked 
down upon the city and vicinity outspread in beautiful pano- 
rama of limestone and landscape. 

Inside the walls the scene was a jumbled confusion of houses 
that were box-like concerns with flat roofs and parapets, evi- 
dently the summer sleeping places of the inhabitants, and each 
of them having somewhere on its top a dome resembling an 
inverted washbowl. No streets were visible, but I imagined 
the shadowy rifts running irregularly between the buildings 
indicated these. Every foot of available space was occupied 
by some structure of stone, there being no such a remarkable 
condition as a vacant lot or a piece of ground upon which to 
hang the least prospect of a real estate boom. An idea of the 
crowded condition inside the walls may be gathered from the 
statement that there are 40,000 people who live and do business 
in a little compressed area half a mile square, and that there 
are a large number of chapels, mosques and churches besides. 
The houses have two stories as a rule, in addition to the fresh air 
roof garden arrangement on top. The first floor is occupied as 
a shop, the other for family living purposes, and the entii'e 
structure is rarely more than fifteen feet high. 

The city outside the walls, quite as populous as the one in- 
side, had more space to air itself, the buildings were more com- 
modious — some of them even modern — and the streets were of 
generous width for an eastern town. Blount Zion and Aloriah 
Avere surrounded, except on the north, by deep and precipitous 
valleys, and a depression through the midst of the walled city 



120 Six and One Ahroad 

separated these two eminences. Directly east across the Valley 
of Jehoshaphat, through which the brook Kedron runs when 
it rains, majestically rose the Mount of Olives, the largest of 
the mountain neighborhood. 

The general view in every direction was one of rugged moun- 
tains and ravines, a wilderness of rock, and in all the wide 
expanse of hills and valleys there was not a solitary tree to 
soften the hard outlines except a few olives here and there 
that were preserved perhaps in memory of some sacred event. 

Our company, excepting the priests who sight-saw by them- 
selves, went into consultation with Jehoshaphat and planned 
a tour of visitation ; and when we issued in a body from the 
door of the Notre Dame a hundred or more fakirs, representing 
every phase of Jerusalem mendicancy and trade, flew at us 
with appeals. Gnarled and twisted beggars held out gallon 
tin cans which they rattled with noisy importunity, and shop- 
keepers jerked our sleeves and insisted on showing us into 
their places of business. In the doors of these shops the goods 
were displayed in the most tempting manner. There was no 
monopoly in Jerusalem curios ; competition was not only active, 
it was rampant and riotous. Damascus shawls glittered in 
tinsel from racks, Turkish artillery bristled from tables, olive- 
wood camels sat complacently in full view and begged for a 
change of ownership, and all along the line Syrians were leap- 
ing up out of the squalling crowd and beckoning us to visit 
them. Jehoshaphat, filling as he did the dual role as our guide 
and as agent for every curio concern in the city, insisted that we 
visit the shops "just to see the many beautiful things." But 
we rebelled with such vigor that he led us without further 
parleying through the mob and into the gate of the wall. 

The streets inside the walls were only a few feet wide, in- 
differently paved with rocks, and closely crowded on both sides 
by low houses that were occupied for any purpose from a 
stuffy joint to a church. Following the inexorable course of 
these channels whithersoever they led, we came presently to a 
rather abrupt dip in the topography and descended by a narrow 
and devious passageway more like the steps of a mysterious 
hall than a street till we emerged in an open court where gangs 



Inside the Walls of Jerusalem 121 

of folks in strange dress sat in the midst of beads and trinkets 
that were offered for sale. The beads, which predominated 
over other stntf, were of a bine color and possessed the virtne 
of keeping off the "evil eye," a sorcery of the spirits which 
is dreaded in the East. They are worn npon the arms and 
ankles, and even the horses, donkeys and camels are protected 
by them from bewitchery when worn npon their heads or 
necks. 

We were at the entrance of the Church of the Holy Sepul- 
chre. In a niche to the left of the door of this noted clmrch, 
inside, a company of Turks were playing at a game, callously 
indifferent to the throngs that came and went. Their duty was 
to interfere in ease of a quarrel or a fight between the rival 
fanatics, and the fact that numerous riots have occurred there 
and that the sects still entertain exceeding bitterness toward 
each other makes their constant presence a necessity and not 
a mere formality. In front of us under lamps and aboriginal 
gewgaws was the Stone of Unction, which we were informed 
by Jehoshaphat Avas the identical stone upon which Christ was 
laid after his crucifixion. A Russian Pilgrim was at that mo- 
ment kneeling before it with his hands uplifted and a look of 
passionate devotion upon his face. How reverently he kissed 
the slab ; how tenderly he pressed his lips against it ; how his 
shock of unkempt yellow hair fell upon it and trembled with 
the fervency of the adoration ! While we watched curiously, 
this pathetic fellow drew from his long, heavy cloak a bunch of 
beads and rubbed them upon the stone, and likewise a number 
of handkerchiefs, to sanctify them and absorb the virtue of 
the holy thing that he might use them in his far-off home to 
heal his loved ones in case of sickness. And then he drew 
away regretfully to seek another object on which to spend his 
high-wrought veneration; and others came, and still they kept 
coming, crowds of ignorant, superstitious pilgrims and natives 
to go through the same pious routine. 

The rock is a fraud. About once every hundred years it 
wears away and is replaced ; but the new one is kissed and 
venerated with undiminished fervor. 

A few paces to the right up a slope of the floor in a dark 



122 



Six and One Abroad 




Inside the Walls of Jerusalem, 123 



apartment is the reputed place of the crucihxion. For aught 
we know it may be the real Calvary. Over this sacred ground 
lamps are burning and there are altars, one dedicated to Je- 
sus, another to ^lary. In the hilltop through the open floor 
are revealed three holes encased in silver wherein stood ( ?) 1900 
years ago the crosses of Christ and the thieves. In the rock, 
which is part of the hill, exposed to view through an opening 
and protected by iron grating, is a fissure alleged to have been 
made by an earthquake following the crucifixion ; and through 
this crevice our guide, who believes all things, informed us 
the blood of Christ ran from his pierced side upon the head 
of Adam who was buried directly underneath, in that way 
becoming effective ex post facto upon Adam's sins. 

A room cut from the rock in the side of this alleged Calvary 
is pointed out as the place whence, as a sort of headquarters, 
the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine, in the fourth cen- 
tury prosecuted her search for the three cro-^ses. The crosses 
were found, in a cave in the side of the hill ; and it is said 
of this pious woman, all of which is implicitly believed by the 
simple people who worship there, that in order to determine 
which of the three crosses was the one upon which Christ was 
crucified, she had a woman who was incurably ill placed upon 
tliem ; that the invalid was thrown into convulsions on two of 
the crosses, but that the third restored her to perfect health. 

A portion of the column to which Jesus was bound during 
the scourging is preserved in a niche under a lattice screen. 
The devout pilgrims, unable to kiss this object, do the next 
best thing— push a stick, which is kept for the purpose, against 
the column and communicate their caresses through that me- 
dium. The footprints of Jesus are shown in the rock, and the 
stocks in which his feet were placed. 

There are all kinds of chapels, altars and contraptions erected 
over the supposed localities where the various events incident 
to the crucifixion occurred. There are: The Chapel of Part- 
ing the Raiment, of the Invention of the Cross where the crosses 
were found, of the Crowning with Thorns, of the Derision, of 
the Raising of the Cross, of the Agony, of the Nailing to the 
Cross, of the Apparition where Christ appeared to Mary after 



124 Six and One Abroad 

the resurrection, and last and most important, the Holy Sep- 
ulchre. 

The Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, the main feature of the 
church, stands upon an elevated platform to which there is 
a small ante-room called the Chapel of the Angel. Here we 
waited half an hour for a chance to enter, and when we finally 
managed to crowd in, bending almost to our knees at the door, 
we were conscious of other feelings than those of idle curiosity, 
for there are good grounds for believing it to be the place where 
Jesus' body was actually laid, and where, too, it became the 
first fruit of the resurrection. Fifteeen lamps were burning 
in this little place and it was hot to the perspiration point. In 
the center, protected by a glass case from vandalism and kisses, 
the stone was shown which the angels rolled away from the 
tomb. Even the glass case over this stone showed the wasting 
effect of superstitious affection; indeed it is entirely worn away 
in time by the constant contact with lips of the ultra-devout 
and has to be frequently replaced. Stooping low and per- 
spiring freely, we peered into the room of the sepulchre where 
a priest was sprinkling holy water on the heads of Russian 
pilg^rims who were reverently, passionately, lingeringly kissing 
the spot where the Savior lay. After the Russians had retired 
with sorrow like that of a mother taking last leave of a child 
at the grave, we entered. There was room for only four or 
five persons. The neverwfailing lamps were burning, forty- 
three in all, thirteen belonging each to the Latins, Greeks and 
Armenians, and four to the Copts. The tomb, which is two feet 
high, three feet wide and six feet, four inches long, was cut 
in the rock, and was veneered with marble to protect it from 
vandalism and the disintegrating effect of kisses. Apertures 
in the ceiling of the chapel allowed the smoke of the lamps to 
escape, but the heat was intense. In the side of the chapel we 
saw the holes through which the holy fire was given out on 
Greek Easter. 

The tombs of Nicodemus and of Joseph of Aramathea are 
near the Holy Sepulchre, and the two marble circles indicate 
where Mary and Jesus stood on the morning of the Resurrec- 
tion. In a large room;, unoccupied for any other purpose, a 



Inside the Walls of Jerusalem 125 

rounded stone marks the exact center of the world, for it is 
part of the orthodoxy of Jerusalem that the world is flat, and 
it is the prevailing belief that imaginary lines drawn diagonal- 
ly across this old globe from its four corners cross at this rock. 

I have not yet mentioned the Chapel of Longinus — the Roman 
soldier who thrust his spear into Jesus' side, and who, after 
repenting of the deed, earned a place in this Westminster Ab- 
bey of superstition — nor the Chapel of Adam whose bones the 
resourceful church officials have comprehended in the limits 
of this comprehensive sanctuary, nor the tomb of Melchisedec, 
nor scores of other chapels and sacred sites, enumeration and 
description of which would fill a volume. But there are two 
objects in the Church about which there is no doubt — only these 
two — the tombs respectively of Godfrey de Bouillon and Bald- 
win I, noble misguided crusaders who led a foolish fanaticism 
that is bearing fruit to this day. In a chapel adjacent we were 
allowed to look upon the sword and spurs of Godfrey. 

Upon leaving the Church we proceeded along the route of 
the Via Dolorosa, a narrow, crooked way leading to Calvary 
through a part of the business section from the place where the 
condemnation of Christ occured. There are fourteen stations 
along the route marked in Latin: "Station I," "Station II," 
and so on, each of the fourteen representing some fiction of 
the procession to the cross, or some real incident such as the 
transfer of the cross to the back of Simon the Cyrene, etc. At 
this latter station, which is No. VI, if I remember correctly, 
there is a depression in the wall, now worn to quite a cavity 
by the kisses of the faithful, which it is claimed was made by 
Jesus' hand as he fell under the weight of the cross. 

Why should the way from the Roman Governor's palace to 
Calvary be regarded as a Via Dolorosa? Why should Chris- 
tians weep at the tomb' of the Savior ? Why should they sorrow 
upon observing these historic sites or in mental recapitulation 
of the incidents of the arrest, trial, condemnation, the flagel- 
lation, mockery, the journey, the jeers, the cross? It must 
have been real pleasure for Jesus to suffer the attempted 
scheme of his humiliation. It did not humiliate him to spit 
in his face, nor to press a crown of thorns on his brow. He 



126 



Six and One Abroad 




LEPERS, JERUSALEM. 



Inside the Walls of Jcnisalon 127 

did not mind the beating, and the burden of cross-bearing was 
even sweet when he knew it was part of a divine plan. The 
death on Ihc cress was not hard. John Jacob Astor went to 
his death on the Titanic with a smile on his lips in order that 
his wife rnd unborn child and other ladies of the ship might 
live, and many a man and many a woman has suffered worse 
tortures and a more grievous death than Jesus and did it, too, 
heroically, sublimely, even joyfully. It is nothing to die. The 
most hardened desperado can die. Suffering is worse than 
death, and yet it is little to suffer, for many a woman suffers 
agonies of body and spirit vastly greater than those to which 
Jesus was subjected. And I have no sympathy with those 
pictures that represent my Savior with sad and dejected and 
hopeless, abject and pitiful expression, for I know he with- 
stood the taunts and whips with courageous mien and de- 
meanor and that there was an air of triumphant assurance in his 
conduct. The way to the Cross then was a way of triumph; 
a great plan was in labor and a great purpose was bom on 
Calvary. Tell me that Jesus minded the little insigniticant 
incident of death ! 

It must be about 300 yards from Calvary by the Via Dolorosa 
to the House of Pilate, and after traversing this gloomy, dol- 
orous, devious way, part of the time in dank and dark and 
rancid, covered, streets — for some of the streets of Jerusalem 
are covered — it Avas a relief to find in the House of Pilate 
something that appealed to our credulity as being genuine. 
Under the floor of a convent which stands at this place, sev- 
eral feet below the surface of the street, we could see a frag- 
ment of an ancient pavement; and if this be in fact Pilate's 
palace, there can be no doubt that the pavement is the Gabat- 
tha of John 19:13. The chequered rocks upon which the 
soldiers played their games of dice are visible yet. 

Connecting with this old palace by the Ecce Homo Arch is 
the Castle of Antonia, where Paul adroitly pleaded his Roman 
citizenship to escape a whipping (Acts 21:37), and which is 
occupied as a garrison now as it was then. 

At this point we secured the attendance of a Turk guard — 
an absolute requirement — and stepped inside the Temple Area, 



128 Six and One Abroad 

a rare and welcome experience after being crowded and 
jammed in stuffy channels and rooms that differed little from 
catacombs. This noted holy place seemed like a convent cam- 
pus, with its two imposing buildings and its extravagance of 
grass and open and unoccupied space — just space — and its 
merciless circuit of walls ; walls within walls ; a kind of holy 
of holies. I almost shouted with delight at the sight of this 
little park of thirteen acres in the midst of crowded Jerusa- 
lem ; and the green grass was so clean, so pure and inviting, 
so very different from the poor dirty, ignorant, superstitious 
folks who controlled it, so suggestive, by its universality, of 
home, so hospitable-like its wide-spread carpet of welcome. 
There was no exclusive sanctity in this — God's carpet — and no 
special shoes were required to insulate alien feet. 

Jehoshaphat began at once a peripatetic lecture on the his- 
tory of Herod's and Solomon's temples, which we abruptly 
terminated — we could get all the history we wanted in books 
—and made our way toward the great central and commanding 
feature, the Mosque of Omar. 

The old temple in which Christians are most interested was 
destroyed long ago, and not one stone was left upon another 
— a literal fulfillment of Jesus' prophecy; a part of the original 
pavement of the court doubtless remains, and a fragment of 
the wall that enclosed it — only these and nothing more. 

The Mosque of Omar was erected in 691, as a Mohammedan 
fane, and has remained such ever since, except for a few spas- 
modic epochs when crusaders were in possession of the city. 
It is a marble structure in the form of an octagon, each of 
the eight sides being sixty-six feet wide, and hovering over 
it a monstrous dome that is crowned with a gilded crescent. 
This is regarded by many travelers who are capable judges 
as the most beautiful structure in the world. I think the esti- 
mate the wildest kind of an exaggeration. Certainly there can 
be nothing specially charming in the exterior except in com- 
parison with other architecture of degenerate Jerusalem. 

Donning the inevitable snowshoes, we passed through the in- 
evitable door curtains into a circular room that was more re- 
markable for what it contained than for its beauty. Squarely 



Inside the Walls of Jerusalem 129 

under the dome was a roelc, unhewn and irre<i'ular in shape, 
about 20x60 feet in size, which mark-d the highest point of 
Mount ]\Ioriah. There is no question that upon this rock the 
sacrifices of the old temple were offered, for a conduit cut in 
the rock leads from its surface to a subterranean chamber, and 
it is not doubted that the blood of the slain animals was disposed 
of through this channel. It i.s a^so believed to be the place 
where Abraham prepared to offer up his son Isaac. The rock 
was enclosed and protected by an iron railing, and being one 
of the most sacred treasures of the IMoslems in Jerusalem it 
bears the special distinction of not having been touched by 
the polluting hand of any non-Mohammedan since the period 
of the crusades. 

Two strands of the beard of Mahomet are kept in a case in 
the center of the temple, and on a certain religious occasion 
once a year this priceless hair is carried around the temple in 
a procession and with much ceremony. In the floor a slab of 
stone contains three nails, and when we came upon this object 
we were informed by the credulous Jehoshapat that Mahomet 
during his temporal life drove nineteen nails into it — that all 
but three of them had been extracted by the devil, and when 
the last one should be drawn the end of the world would come. 
We were assured that the payment of a franc would so delight 
the Prophet that our admiasion into his paradise would be 
guaranteed. 

These are all the temple contains. It is not a mosque at all, 
but an enclosure for the rock. The canopy of the dome is a 
graceful sweep of gold and brown wrought into charming de- 
signs, and translucent tiling in many colors over the numerous 
windows reduces the sunlight and diffuses it in a mellow poly- 
chromatic radiance. This light, the windows, the dome, are 
beautiful, but the effect upon the eye, Mdiich would, otherwise 
be entrancing, is marred by the presence of the huge, uncomely 
rock which predominated over every attempt at tasty ornamen- 
tation. In the cave underneath, excavated 2,000 years before 
Christ, are niches where Abraham, David and Jesus are said 
to have prayed, and in the center of its floor the tramp of the 
foot resounds in a manner that indicates a cavity beneath, 



130 Six and One Abroad 

and authorities believe there is a connection there with the 
sewer that carried off the blood and other matter of the sacri- 
fices, but the Turks will not permit an examination to be made. 
The temple has much of the stone of the palatial Temple of 
Herod in its walls, and some of its pillars are said to be relics 
of the greater Temple of Solomon, the one that astonished the 
Sheban queen. The pavements of the spacious open courts are 
largely just as they were in Christ's time, certain chisel marks 
and styles of dressing upon the stones enabling antiquarians 
to identify them as Roman, Hebrew or Saracenic workmanship. 
The grounds contain numerous praying places, a marble Mo- 
hammedan pulpit, with its accessory of stairs, etc., and while 
we were rambling from point to point, the call of the Moslem 
muezzins resounded from the minarets of the city. Our guard 
at once excused himself and joining a party on a plat of grass 
went through the genuflections of Mohammedan worship. Far 
off to the right near the Beautiful Gate, a woman clad in black 
and veiled as Moslem women always are, dropped to her knees, 
lifted her hands and fell forward, flat upon the ground. We 
were struck with the intense devotion of this simple people and 
felt like taking off our hats out of respect to the religion that, 
however erroneous in many respects, will yet not permit its 
millions of adherents to worship in the presence of any pic- 
ture nor become crazed over any stone or hole in the ground. 



CHAPTER XV. 

The Wilderness of Jiidea, tlie Dead Sea and 
the Jordan. 

The road from Jerusalem to Jericho is a dangerous one to 
travel even now as it was in the olden days. At least the Bed- 
ouins who live in the mountain fastnesses seek to perpetuate 
that notion as a paying proposition. These pirates of the moun- 
tains have plied their commerce of robbery, and of murder as 
a side line, until Turkey, powerless to restrain or conquer them, 
has accepted the alternative of paying them an annual sum as 
a guarantee of protection to her citizens and property. 

We left Jerusalem a cold, rainy morning to go down to Jericho, 
in charge of Melchizedek, our variegated linguist of the Galilee 
trip, and prepared to spend two days and a night on the jour- 
ney, for the distance was twenty-odd miles. 

Skirting the Mount of Olives, or rather rounding it mid- 
way between its ornamented summit and the deep cut valleys 
that isolated it from ]\Ioriah and neighboring hills — noting as 
we passed that the lower west side was literally covered with 
Jewish graves — we followed a beautiful white road in its 
deviation till it finally accomplished the circuit of the moun- 
tain. On the steep east side of the famous mountain we encoun- 
tered the village of Bethany. AVhat an unworthy scion of the 
first Bethany that Jesus knew and visited! Oh, I don't know, 
of course ; the little village may have been then, as now, untidy 
and unbeautiful, and the inhabitants may have been then as 
now, to paraphrase the poet, unswept, unhonored and unhung, 
but I imagine ]\Iary and ^Martha were a couple of tidy spinsters 
who would not have lived a day in such mean surroundings. 
The story of these gentle, pious women is one of the prettiest 
in the Bible, and it was a real delight to stand upon the ground 
hallowed by their hospitality to the Savior. How often did 
He retire to this quiet, congenial home from the tumult of the 
city and the activities of His busy career! Of course, this 
home, the home of ]\Iartha and Alary, is shown — the original 



132 



Six and One Abroad 




Judei, Dead Sea, and Jordan 183 

home slightly disfigured — hut I am inclined to accept the warn- 
ing of the guide books that it is only another link in the chain 
of petty graft in Pale-itine. The tomb of Lazarus is another 
place of interest in Bethany. As I walked down the flight of 
steps into this ancient crypt it recpiired little effort of the im- 
agination to reproduce the Bible scene of Christ standing in the 
door of the grave, the imperial voice of connnand, the retreat 
of death, the affectionate meeting of the dead and the living, 
the latter looking on with startled eyes. Into this tomb, if Laz- 
arus really slept in it for four days prior to his resurrection, 
he was no doubt laid again and permanently, and his sisters, 
too, to await the second coming of their Guest of blessed 
memory. 

At Bethany, our party was joined by an escort of Bedouin 
sheiks, a couple of terra cotta bucks in startling costume astride 
gaily caparisoned steeds. In grandmother bonnets and color- 
banded cloaks, antediluvian muskets across their backs and the 
decorated handles of dirks showing in their sashes, they were 
as picturesque and dangerous and pompously vain as any in- 
flated marshal who ever rode at the head of a Fourth of July 
parade. 

They can afford a display, these sheiks, for they have the most 
lucrative graft in all Judea. Every party that goes down from 
Jerusalem to Jericho is forced to pay them a tribute under cover 
of their employment as guards. I asked Melehizedek if there 
would really be any danger in case a party chose to avoid the 
rule and make the trip unattended, and he answered with that 
Oriental shrug of the shoulders and arching of the brows that 
means so much. After all, it is more civilized than their former 
method of forcible detainer and hold-up ; it is also high finance 
of the modern order, and tho'^e sheiks ought to have their pic- 
tures in the magazines and their feet dangling over the arms 
of mahogany chairs on Fifth Avenue. All the way down and 
back they rode along the line of our caravan — for there were 
half dozen carriages and hacks in our party — adopting every 
artifice they could to impress us with a sense of their im- 
portance. 

After descending with many a zigzag and abrupt turn to the 



134 



Six and One Abroad 



foot of Olivet, we halted at the Apostle's Fountain, one of the 
two springs between Jerusalem and our destination ; many a 
time Jesus and his Apostles must have rested at this liquid 
semi-colon in the sentence of their journeys to and fro from 
the Jordan and the cities there. Beyond the fountain, the road 
wound and turned with the sinuous ravines and rose and dipped 
with the hills until upon a ridge of rock twelve miles out from 




GOING UP FROM JERUSALEM TO TERICO— NOTICE THE FINE ROAD 
AND THE DEARTH OF TREES. 



Jerusalem it reached an inn which is declared, with what war- 
rant I know not, to stand on the exact spot where a certain man 
of Bible times fell among thieves. It is called the Good Samar- 
itan Inn. 

At once upon leaving this refreshing hospice we were in the 
midst of the "wilderness of Judea, " and it is hard to imagine 
a wilder scene— rock-ribbed, mis-shapen mountains, the mis- 
carriages of creation — a bewildering confusion of ossified angles 
and petrified irregularities — a cyclopean scrap-pile without a 



Judea, Dead Sea, and Jordan 135 

fragment of a curve of beauty or a single segment of symmetry. 
The ragged cliffs of one mountain almost dove-tailed into the 
concavities of another, and there was no room in that hodge- 
podge of disorder to hang a valley or to erect a habitation. Did 
you imagine that trees were necessary to the constitution of a 
wilderness? Be disillusioned now, for in all the extent of the 
wilderness of Judea there is not one emerald-tufted tree nor 
humble shrub to offset the epidemic of deformity or add a 
touch of color to the riot of unrestrained disorder. Nor so far 
as we had gone was there even a stream to trill a rhythmic pro- 
test against the jargon of discord. And the gorges gaped, and 
the ravines yawned, and Desolation sat with ashen hue and sol- 
emn mien upon the whole incongruous misfit. There was never 
a feudal castle so impregnable as these natural fortresses of 
Judea. An ideal haunt of the Arabs, impenetrable and secure, 
the world never saw the army that could dislodge them. 

From the highest points of the road we got occasional glimpses 
of the Jordan valley, and of the Salt Sea, too, where the waters 
of the famous old river, having run their spiral course, tumble 
into the great blue coffin and die. 

At last the final plunge; it could be called nothing else, for 
the road began to pitch violently in an attempt to relieve itself 
of objectionable travel and at length suddenly dipped at an 
angle that was as steep as could be without being perpendicular, 
forcing us from sheer danger to quit the carriage and take to 
our feet. The scenery here reached the climax of the wild and 
weird. To the right mountains seemed to be piled on mountains 
as if drawing back from some calamity they feared in the val- 
ley at their feet. To the left a dangerous chasm opened its 
jaws of crinkled strata. Somewhere below in the midst of this 
picturesque rupture a stream sang a plaintive melody, and as 
we progressed slowly afoot we could hear it quarreling with im- 
pending rocks or rapturously shouting as it leaped a declivity. 
It was the brook Cherith, the same that cheered Elijah in his 
hermitage. Overhead in graceless flight and gloomily perched 
on the cliffs we descried a number of ravens, descendants, no 
doubt, of those that fed the prophet ; the Old Testament scene 
was reproduced complete with the exception of the actual pres- 



136 



Six mid One Abroad 




Juclea, Dead Sea, and Jordan 137 

ence of the lonely man of God and him we could easily supply 
with the imagination. 

A little path wound along the other side of the chasm — a 
mystery it was how it was cut there and steady must be the 
feet that follow it. It was the Pilgrims' road to the Jordan, 
and as we looked the advance guard of a troop of these melan- 
choly people appeared — stalwart, golden-haired enthusiasts who 
had come all the way from their Russian homes to see the sa- 
cred places of the Holy Land. In fur caps, heavy cloaks, and 
ponderous boots, under rolls of bedding and provisions and as- 
sisted by stout sticks, they wended their way by the tortuous, 
dangerous path, a string of them two hundred yards long. 

Presently from a bend in the road the valley of the Jordan 
smiled in our faces, and the hills of ^loab away across on the 
other side of the great empty amphitheater came into view 
through a heavy purple haze. A clump of thatched huts some 
miles away and two or three more presentable houses that were 
said to be hotels marked the site of ancient Jericho. We had 
come down a distance of three thousand feet since leaving Jeru- 
salem, the sun had inished the clouds away, every bit of breeze 
Avas barred by the mountains and we were very, very warm 
Avhen after walking and sliding for half an hour we finally 
came to the end of our transportation troubles. With coats off 
and perspiration profuse we entered the carriages again and 
drove across the limpid, rapid, cheerful Cherith — in its green 
depression an Arab tent and nude Arab urchins at play — to 
the Hotel Gilgal, in the vicinity of old Jericho. 

Stopping at this place only long enough to apprise the cooks 
of the arrival of thirty ravenous appetites, and pending the 
preparation of things to satisfy them, we drove through the 
village — a village consisting of two competing hotels of unpre- 
tentious architecture, and of mean mud huts and Arab tents — 
by a road that was banked with evergreens a mile or more to 
Elisha's Fountain. After our experience with the desolation 
of the morning drive, this great dashing stream was a .joy for- 
ever. Somewhere in the Bible it is stated that Elisha salted 
these waters to heal them and sweeten them, and certain it is 
that thev were sweet to our eyes that day. I could have stood 



138 Six and One Al)roacl 

for hours and looked into the depths of the peerless pool and 
listened to the music of the great water wheel as it turned m 
the splashing current. In the midst of our rapture here Mel- 
chizedek, after relating the story of Elisha's miracle, pointed 
with omniscient eclat to a bleak mountain that was almost with- 
in a stone's throw, and stated that Christ was ^'quarantined" 
there for fort^^ days — what he tried to say was that Christ was 
tempted there. 

After returning to the Gil gal, while the familiar odor of a 
broiling billy in the kitchen announced the subject matter of 
our meal, and awaiting the opportunity to fall upon him, we 
analyzed our environment in shirt sleeves from a second-story 
window. The sky was clear and a hot sun was pouring down 
upon the plain from the meridian. A garden of orange trees, 
banana foliage, flowers, cactus and grasses surrounded our ren- 
dezvous and water as bright as a covey of larks was singing in 
rills and winding from emerald copse to flower bed; while 
capping the whole tropical climax was an old, fat, unadulterated 
negro woman with face of shining ebony, bare and rusty feet, 
bandana head-rag and toad-frog nose, a replica to every detail 
of the old-time darkey of the South, waddling with aimless 
abandon in the midst of the scene. Poplar trees were plentiful 
in every direction in the immediate vicinity, and spires of slim 
cedars and tufted palms were occasional in the view. A cem- 
etery, neglected and in ruins, the road with its never ceasing 
current of carriages and camels and pilgrims, the homelike 
cackle of hens and crowing of cocks, the drowsy drone of katy- 
dids, the singing of birds, bright-winged butterflies a-sail in 
the pulsing waves of light, the azure sky aflame with a radiant 
sun, a violet mist solemnizing the great basin and mystifying 
its rugged perimeter — such was the picture that we saw, and 
such was the outspread panorama of the Promised Land when 
Moses stood on Pisgah yonder and viewed the landscape o'er. 

This land is said to have once flowed with milk and honey r 
it is not so now ; the goats and bees have taken to the mountains. 
The Promised Land is not a very , promising land ; it is too hot 
for civilized man to take up a residence in its oven, and I imagine 



Juclea, Bead Sea, and Jordan 139 



that in August the temperature would be about right to sterilize 
an Arab or fry a pigment in a negro's skin. 

Thirty minutes at lunch — goat meat and a variety of vegeta- 
bles from the irrigated garden of the hotel. 

Thirty minutes more of preparation for the afternoon ride, 
and we hasten to the Dead Sea and the Jordan. 

The Dead Sea appears to be hanging indistinctly in the sky 
like a mirage, and surely not more than a couple of miles away, 
but as we approach it, it seems to recede as if luring us to some 
special bargain in scenery or to some dreamy retreat behind the 
trailing mists. The two miles are doubled and still the myste- 
rious water is apparently as far away as when we started to- 
ward it. Dust rises from the wheels of the carriages and set- 
tles in impalpable clouds of nuisance in our eyes, while a per- 
fect deluge of heat pours upon us out of the red-hot sun. Va- 
grant herds of camels shuffle awkv/ardly from thorn bush to 
thorn bush, the only vegetation with nerve enough to attempt 
an existence between the salted soil and the blistering skies. On 
either side are the blue-tinted mountains, towering now in deso- 
late cones and holding the great grey lifeless sea in their ex- 
tended arms. The sky is dulled to a pallorous drab, and droop- 
ing down and over all a dim, mysterious mist. It is the atmos- 
phere of the calamity, of the ruin, of the dead. All the while 
the odor of things embalmed in salt has been growing more pun- 
gent until as we stand upon the naked banks it rises in almost 
visible fumes. As far as the eye can reach now the liquid sur- 
face of the sea is spread, lapping the pebbly beach at our feet 
and dying in the distance behind the insubstantial curtains. For 
several miles on either side the shore is spar-^ely spread with 
wrecks of drift— uprooted trees denuded of foliage and bark, 
and their limbs and roots white and ghastly like so many skele- 
tons. A kite or some other bird is flying above the scene and 
the wonder is what it can hope for in this desolate locality. 

It is strange that this great sea is mentioned so little in 
Scripture, not once, so far as I am informed by the preachers, 
in the New Testament, and only a single time in the Old, Gene- 
sis 14:4, where Sodom, Gomorrah and two other cities are 



140 Six cmd One Abroad 

named as existent in the Valley of Siddim "which is the Great 
Salt Sea." 

East of the lake on the mountain slope the remains of the old 
castle of Macherus where John the Baptist was beheaded by 
Herod can be seen and above it rises Nebo — somewhere in the 
cloisters of its ravines is the crypt of Moses : 

And no man dug that sepulchre, 

And no man saw it e'er; 
The sons of God upturned the sod 

And laid the great man there. 

Tiie Jordan is so very crooked that its coils are twice the 
length of a straight line drawn from Galilee whence it issues to 
the Dead Sea where it dies. A muddier freshet never went 
down the Mississippi than prevails in the channel of the Jordan 
during the rainy season of late winter and early spring. An 
undergrowth of reeds and bushes lines its banks and obscures 
its sloven appearance all the way of the drive until we come 
squarely upon it. A rickety bridge of poles leads across an 
overflowed slough to a shanty where the omnipresent souvenir 
man has his haunt, and upon this bridge we move in single file 
through a deadly fire of kodaks, till we stand where the Israel- 
ites first stood on the soil of the Promised Land. The river is 
swollen and as brown as an unwashed Turk ; its current sweeps 
angrily around a bend vexedly tossing the low hanging boughs 
of trees. For a shilling a ride may be taken in a skiff, or for 
half a franc a canteen may be bought and some of the water 
taken away, having care to boil it when you get back to Jerusa- 
lem. At this place Jesus is said to have been baptized of John 
— the locality is traditional — but it is not traditional that those 
pilgrims yonder are right now and in our sight undressing and 
creeping down the slimy banks into the water, men and women as 
naked as when they were born. Those pilgrims are not bathing 
in the Jordan from simple sentiment such as moves us to ride 
upon its surface or carry it away in canteens or cut walking 
sticks from its reeds, but from a sincere belief in its sancity 
and healing virtue ; directly they will wet a sheet that they 
have brought for the purpose and this they will carry home 



Judea, Dead Sea, and Jordan 141 

and keep piously until their death and in it as a shroud they 
will sleep securely till the Judgment. 

It is hard to cudgel the brain into a leap across the centuries 
to those holy times when Christ's own feet pressed the soil 
my own are pressing now; hard to realize that here the dove 
of the Holy Ghost descended upon His shoulder ; that the hosts 
of Israel traversed this plain ; that countless thousands lived 
in walled cities here ; that its fertile fields met the eye of ]\Ioses 
in the dim beginnings of time. But it is even so. Epochs of 
history have been made in this now deserted arena, millions 
have striven and worshipped and died, and in a long hiatus of 
inactive centuries their works have been covered by debris till 
they can be seen now only and vaguely through the glasses 
of history. 

On our return to Jericho we passed a Greek monastery that 
marked the place where John the Baptist is said to have made 
his home while preaching in the wilderness. It is easy to un- 
derstand why John was clothed so scantily here; it was all the 
climate demanded, and really a more elaborate toilet would 
have been next to impossible in summer. 

There are two splendid perennial streams at Jericho which are 
capable of irrigating an extensive area — the Jordan is too low 
for utilization in that respect — but I think the Israelites were 
wise in changing their headquarters as soon as they possibly 
could to the cooler heights of Jerusalem. Of the old walls of 
Jericho there are astounding remains and the archaeologists are 
resurrecting them from the mounds which denote the city's lo- 
cation. 

And now we bid farewell to Jerusalem and all the Holy Land. 
"VVe have seen stranger things than we expected to see in a land 
where we knew everything was strange. The people are low 
in the scale of intelligence ; in this there was disappointment ; 
fanaticism and superstition are more in evidence than piety 
and spirituality. The Jews are returning to the city slowly, 
but the Jews were never tillers of the soil. The consequence is 
the trades are full and far in excess of the demand and the re- 
turning Jews are in the straits of poverty. Rothschild and other 
men of the race have built extensive apartment houses in which 



142 



Six and One Ahroad 




Judei, Bead Sea, and Jordan 14S 

the Jews are permitted to reside for a limited time without 
paying rent; at the expiration of the term they are supposed 
to have established themselves in a self-supporting business and 
must give way to others. 

In the eourse of years, perhaps of decades, conditions will 
change; some progressive nation will take hold of Palestine and 
cultivate its valleys and terrace its hills so that it may support 
a great population as it used to do. In that event the Jews 
will flock there and the dream of their restoration be realized 
at least in part. At present agriculture is seriously handi- 
capped by the oppressive taxation of the Turkish government. 
The rate is ten per cent of all products of the soil, of olives 
and grapes and what not. If that were all that they took it 
would not be so bad. But the taxes are farmed out, sold to the 
highest bidder, and the satrap who secures the privilege is given 
carte hlanche in his collections. He takes w^hat he pleases and 
he pleases to take often as much as 60 per cent of the earnings 
of the people — takes the actual produce, not the money, for the 
producer has none. 

Those who live inside the walls of Jerusalem are fortunate, 
for the government exacts no tax at all from them on any prop- 
erty there. 

Every family in Palestine is required to pay a tax on 30 
pounds of salt whether they have it or not. Turkey owns the 
Dead kSea and will not permit any one to handle its commerce 
of salt but herself and she sells it high. The government also 
exacts an army tax of $2.50 from every one not a native Turk, 
in default of which he is committed to pri.son. 

I had occasion one day to visit the American Colony, a 
splendid example of thrift and intelligence, located some two 
miles north of the city, and while I was there a number of Jews 
came — Gaddites they were called, a portion of the tribe of Gad 
who had recently come to the holy city from Southern Arabia. 
A more forlorn, ragged and distressed looking body I had not 
seen before even in Jerusalem. They had come to ask for as- 
sistance from the colony in paying the army tax, and the big- 
hearted Americans paid it for them. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

Queer Egyptian Customs. 

In Abookir Bay, just off the coast of Egypt, the boy hero of 
McGuffey's reader ''stood on the burning deck, Whence all 
but he had fled." As our steamship passed over the battlefield 
of water where this unusual feat of youthful obedience was en- 
acted, the Pharaohs and Ptolemies dropped into second place 
in our esteem, and we were glad that the route of our journey 
led by so hallowed a spot and that we were enabled to pay the 
tribute of a visit and of a reminiscent sigh to our school hero 
in the very place where "The flames that lit the battle-wreck, 
Shone 'round him o'er the dead." 

This was surprise number one. Number two came quickly 
afterwards when we steamed into the harbor of Alexandria 
amidst hundreds of steamboats and ships and dropped anchor 
alongside as busy a wharf as can be seen anywhere in the world. 
In our conceptions of Egypt we had drawn too heavily on the 
past and had not taken into consideration the possible changes 
made by commerce. The forest of rigging and masts, the tur- 
bulent wharf, were a surprise and meant that we would have 
to readjust our conceptions of the country. It was the hand of 
the Anglo-Saxon turning up the clock of Egyptian time, the 
iconoclasm of Progress asserting its right of eminent domain 
in one of the sacred graveyards of history. 

We dared not stop over in Alexandria because of the bubonic 
plague which was epidemic there at the time, and therefore 
had to be content with a cursory survey of its splendid modern 
buildings and streets, its Pompey's Pillar of ancient fame, and 
with a long-distance view of the site where stood the lighthouse 
of Paros, one of the famous Seven Wonders of the World — 
wonderful then but insignificant now had it survived to pit its 
beacon against the domesticated electricity of today. 

Our railroad out of Alexandria followed the course of a 
canal which connects the city with the Nile, but early in the 
journey it appeared to digress from the direct route and with 



Queer Egyptian Customs 145 

no other excuse than to allow a view of a certain splendid 
grove of palms. Ah, these palms, how gracefully they stand 
in their fretted trunks and plumes of unchanging fashions, 
children of the ancestors of creation, rioting in the parks and 
fringing the outskirts of a city that has banished them from 
streets where they had aboriginal rights. How they hang to- 
gether in clumps on the level plain as if dreading the encroach- 
ments of enterprise and counselling upon their own preserva- 
tion. How unlike the ^Mediterranean shores anywhere else along 
its thousand miles of upraised curbing of mountains, this wide- 
spread stretch of lowland and of marsh and meadow and sand 
and palms. 

The scenic panorama was unlike anything we had seen be- 
fore. For a hundred and fifty miles not a hill nor the least 
suspicion of one ; a hundred and fifty miles of green fields, 
the richest in the world, and that in the very midst of the 
wastes of Sahara the poorest in the world. As far as the eye 
could reach there were waving rectangles of grain, and here 
and there natives in blue shirts — I will not mention their trou- 
sers inasmuch as there were none to mention — lazily playing 
at work, some with hand-sickles swiping the ripening grain, 
others sound asleep beside antiquated plows or on pallets of 
fresh cut alfalfa. It must have been wash day in Egypt, for 
on every hand women were engaged in this work on the banks 
of the numerous ditches. The laundry list of an Egyptian 
family cannot be very extensive. I should itemize the entire 
wardrobe as follows: One man's gown, one woman's gown. The 
children were dressed in a suit of hair and a sun-grin, neither 
of which was ever washed. To this latter rule there seems to 
have been one notable exception, as shown in my diary. I 
quote as follows from that literary mixture: "Saw an Egyp- 
tian woman bathing an Egyptian baby in an Egyptian mudhole. 
Victim using universal language of babies. First time we have 
seen a native in Turkey, Palestine or Egypt exhibit the slightest 
concern about his personal cleanliness. Let us build a temple 
here and call it The Temple of the Unusual Lavation of the 
Obstreperous Lad . " 

The Nile Valley of which the great river itself is the heart, 



146 Six and One Abroad 

the canals its arteries and the thousand ditches its veins, is a 
strip of verdant and fruitful life. Being absolutely level the 
water is diverted from the canals to the ditches by a process 
that is primitive in the extreme. A big Avheel on the rim of 
which jars are attached is turned slowly through the water of 
the canal and the water thus collected in the jars is conveyed 
mechanically into the ditches where it flows by natural gravita- 
tion on its mission of nourishment to the fields. The power is 
not the gasoline engine nor the windmill, but an Egyptian buf- 
falo or a camel, one seen as often as the other. These animals, 
always blindfolded and alwaj^s treading uncomplainingly the 
rounds of their monotonous routine, were the most unique fea- 
ture of the Valley scenery. I do not know why they are blind- 
folded unless it be to prevent them from growing dizzy. The 
buffalo is a slate-colored pachyderm of docile disposition, with 
horns folded up on its neck to emphasize its domestication. 

Hamlets of mud houses slipped by the car window every 
few minutes ; at first I supposed, of course, these queer little 
box huts were of some substantial material, but no, sir, they 
were of mud, pure and simple — mud which had hardened in 
the furnace of perpetual sunshine. On the sc^uare tops of many 
of them there was a rank growth of wheat or some other grain, 
and in one instance a goat, belly-deep in the growing forage of 
a house-top, nonchalantly observed our arrival. In front of 
these unique abodes men and women whose complexions had 
been burnt through the progress of the centuries to match the 
soil were to be seen frequently squatting or in some other indo- 
lent posture while dogs and goats shared with unshirted chil- 
dren the freedom of the inside. There is something, I reckon, 
in the hazy atmosphere of Egypt and in the easy careless life of 
the sunshot basin to induce frivolous f acetiousness ; on no other 
hypothesis could an entry like this in my journal be explained 
or condoned: ''From the Crimes and Casualties column of the 
Delta Morning News I have clipped the following item: ' Mo- 
hammed- A-Lie in attempting to step over his house today tore 
his shirt from his ankle to the vicinity of his kidneys. He is in 
bed from the unfortunate accident, as his change we understand 
was in wash when it occurred. We hope to see our respected 



Queer Egyptian Customs 147 

fellow citizen out again tomorrow with the rent fully repaired 
and trust he will avoid such playful escapades in the future.' " 

The (juickly shifting panorama of scenery and action kept 
the eye busy — the irrigation ditches with their parallels of 
planted trees cutting the fie.ds into squares, the water sparkling 
in its lazy progress in the ditches, the green grain like a multi- 
tude of mats upon a vast level tioor; the water wheels and the 
quaint power that turned them; the natives in blue mother hub- 
bards, the mud toAvns, the absence of isolated farm homes, the 
railroad wdthout cut or dump in its whole course — contributing 
all this, to the making of a spectacular and attractive picture. 

Many kinds of crops are raised in this fertile summery basin, 
cotton being the chief product, a long staple variety that yields 
from a bale to two bales and a half to the acre when the worms 
do not damage it seriously. The cotton gins of Lower Egypt 
would astonish Joseph quite as much as would the iron horse 
with nostrils of fire and mane of steam could he open his eyes 
and look upon the land over which he once ruled as premier, 
or IMoses could he return from Pisgah to the little house-boat 
of his infancy, or any of the Pharaohs. 

Several cities with pretentious modern buildings, with fac- 
tories and with surprising viaducts spanning the car tracks 
were passed, at two of which the road branched off to join 
intersecting lines in this populous delta. And then we paral- 
leled the west prong of the Great River to where it joined its 
fellow, meanwhile running straight toward two massive pyra- 
mids that pierced the sky far above every tree and village and 
that expanded on the vision and continued to expand until at 
length the delightful journey terminated in their shadow in 
Egypt's capital and greatest city. 



Who has seen Cairo and has not been charmed with it? — its 
perennial sun and rainless seasons, its shadowy streets, its cos- 
mopolitan people, its gayety, its hotels more elegant even than 
the palaces of Cleopatra, the quaint and curious customs of the 
native section of the town, the queer intermingled races, the 
encroachment of civilization on the domain of antiquity, and 



148 



Six and One Abroad 




. X. Ns.TV^, 



A STREET IN OLD CAIRO. 



Queer Egyptian Customs 149 

the relnctuant acquiescence of the old tribes therein, its rare 
history. 

Thin-c are two distinct towns composing the city, the modern 
and the ancient, and the one is as emphatically modern as the 
other is strikingly ancient. In the modern town there are 
electric cars, spacious streets — ah, me, how rare a thing is a 
wide street in any aged town of Europe, Asia or Africa — up- 
to-now shops and stores, and as swell a procession of equipages 
as ever drove down the Champs Elysees on a Sunday afternoon. 
Procession, did I say? From the veranda of Shepherd's Hotel 
I counted four hundred turnouts in fifteen minutes, landaus, 
victorias and cabs drawn by blooded Arabian horses worth each 
a year's salary, and besides these an innumerable train of autos 
and sundry miscellaneous vehicles down to the jogging donkey 
cart. In this hotel, by the way, we sat at dinner every day from 
eight o'clock till nine-thirty while the menu multiplied and di- 
versified, and Soudanese waiters in brown mother hubbards 
that swept the floor and with rings in their ears and tattooed 
crescents on their cheeks glided and slided about with every 
dish Imown to the caterer's art from fricasseed frog legs to 
scrambled crocodile tears, a different waiter for each course, 
and a little brown dwarf in mother hubbard dress at the por- 
tierres, and under the spell of entrancing music that showered 
down upon us from a hidden orchestra through an artificial 
jungle of natural palms. 

jMagicians — Cairo is full of them, every kind of fakir and 
legerdemain performer, the cleverest, too, in the world. I 
stood and watched one of these wizards for a time on the hotel 
veranda, and had it not been that I knew his operations were 
illusions I would have thought them to be miraculous. Trees 
grew out of the floor and fruited, ropes came down from the 
sky, bells rang in the air and dropped mysteriously to the floor. 
The burning bush of ]\Ioses and the budding rod of Aaron were 
duplicated. A cobra stood upright on its bended tail, its neck 
distended, its tongue quivering in its mouth and tried to dance 
to the music of a whistle. 

Out on the street brown men and boys were offering for sale 
stuffed crocodiles and alligators which thev carried uncon- 



150 Six and One xihroad 

. cernedly -under their arms. Others sold ostrich plumes and 
boas and ivory fans for a song, and amber beads and shawls 
with hammered silver worked into designs in the netting that 
they offered at a dollar an ounce. Boys stripped to the waist 
ran in front of the stranger on his promenade and turned hand- 
springs for pennies as compensation. Along the street carriages 
flew and, curious coincidence, seen at any time of the da}^, a 
camel cheek by jowl with an automobile, or an Arab in ruffled 
hood and striped cloak at the elbow of a duke or a synonymous 
American editor. In the composite throngs soiled Egyptian 
ospreys sought their prey for the night and men whispered into 
the stranger's ears the ugly details of a debauchery so vile that 
the very thought of it was sickening and asked to be employed 
as guides to those snares of corruption. Over the turmoil of 
this parliament of nations the exquisite music of an English 
regiment band could be heard or in lieu of this fine music the 
strains of an orchestra, and as apt as not, chiming in with band 
or orchestra, the tom-toms of a native procession. 

Yonder comes a curious procession, headed by musicians with 
blaring instruments that sound like the commingled cries of 
children and bleating of goats. A couple of carriages bring up 
the rear, one open and full of men, the other covered and con- 
cealing darling Mohammedan women. "What is it ? I run from 
one shop to another to find someone who can speak English, 
and learn that it is an aristocratic family celebrating their re- 
turn from Mecca, a trip that insures their entry into glory. 

Every day of our stay in Cairo was a repetition of the up- 
roar of the preceding one, and yet there was always some de- 
velopment that added a fresh feature to the crazy tumult of 
sound and scene. Once we had the good fortune to witness a 
wedding procession. A couple of harlequins in checkered 
clothes and mounted upon gaily-dressed camels performed little 
foolish tricks and beat upon drums suspended from the backs 
of the camels. Following them were a couple of carriages filled 
with veiled women holding babies in their laps. Then came 
the bride's carriage with the glass windows curtained on the 
inside to effect her complete concealment, though I think I saw 
her push the curtain aside and take a peep at the crowds; even 



Queer Egyptian Customs 151 

in Egypt a woman has a woman's universal curiosity. Behind 
her carriage was a queer little contraption swung between two 
elaborately decorated camels and in it were children tossing 
"Turkish Delight" into the street for the children to 
scramble after. The l)ride was going to the house of the groom. 
He had never seen her, though she might have seen him, and 
he was not to see her, even thnt day, for the procession was only 
preliminary to the actual union which occurred several days 
later. 

I was fortunate in being enabled to witness three funeral pro- 
cessions, and these processions, like all other affairs of matri- 
mony and religion in Cairo, were notable for the effort at dis- 
play more than for the sorrow of the bereaved. Such is the 
civilized custom of the heathen, and such, too, let me add, is 
often the heathen custom of civilization. A lot of old men with 
their heads and breasts smeared with — could it be mud? — yes, 
and twisting a blue cloth over their shoulders came down the 
main street (because it was the most public street) on a cart 
drawn by a donkey, and following them two blind men and 
some children singing dolefully in another cart. Then came 
the funeral carriage with the uncoffined corpse and a man and 
a w^oman holding it upright. And la>t, a body of hired mourn- 
ers crying artificially. The whole procession was moving as 
fast as a donkey covild trot, for the Mohammedans from some 
religious scruple rush the deceased to his grave within a few 
minutes after he has drawn his last breath. 

All these things are a part of the life of modern Cairo. 

The old town is altogether a different proposition. Its streets 
are a tangled maze of crooked rifts between the queerest build- 
ings that were ever erected, and its denizens are the unalloyed 
Ishniffilites without a taint of civilization either in their veins 
or customs. Their shops are about the size of a cupboard,, 
sometimes but rarely as big as a kitchen. As in Constantinople^ 
these shops are arranged so that all of them having the same 
kind of wares for sale are located in the same quarter. I 
started out one morning to see if I could get lost in this laby- 
rinth of ravines and succeeded most gloriously in doing so, but 
in the course of much aimless drifting I came upon a myste- 



152 Six and One Abroad 



rious scene the nature of which I could not solve, nor did I 
have the least suspicion what it might be until I got back to 
the hotel and learned that I had flushed an Arab university, 
and one, too, that was world famous, having a matriculation 
of eleven thousand students, though I am sure I did not see 
one-third that number. I did not think much of this univer- 
sity. It had no campus whatever, and there was not the sign 
of a chair in the whole institution. Teachers and pupils sat on 
the floor with their feet crossed under them, and (shades of the 
deestrict school) the whole eleven thousand, if that number ever 
got together, studying aloud. Please try to imagine the con- 
fusion. Most of the students had racks to place their books 
upon and these books were none other than the Koran and the 
Life and Deeds of Mahomet. Little do they care whether the 
earth be a plane or a sphere; the Prophet and his commands 
are all important. 

Continuing my wanderings, in the course of time I emerged 
from a gloomy streetlet into a large square, on the opposite side 
of which stood a pretentious palace where a small body of 
Turkish soldiers on foot were executing evolutions and which 
they kept up until they came to a rigid stand in front of the 
palace. It was then a few minutes to twelve o'clock. Exactly 
at noon a troop of cavalry rode out from a gate that may have 
been an entrance to barracks and halted before the palace door. 
A carriage quickly followed. An attendant swept the steps and 
put down a carpet before the door. And then a dumpy little 
man in European dress and Turkish fez appeared and entered 
the conveyance. Driving around the corner the carriage pro- 
ceeded rapidly down the street surrounded by the soldiers in a 
gallop. It was the Khedive of Egypt going to prayers at a 
mosque, as is his custom every Friday at noon. 

Drifting back into the streets of old Cairo I came again in 
contact with its many strange features the more carefully to 
consider them. What a queer combination of the queerest and 
quaintest sights and sounds and smells in the world ! What a 
bedlam of drivers' "hiyi's" and tumultuous medley of noise! 
What a circus of peculiar costumes and customs ; what un- 
thinkable houses, of mud and bamboo and palm, full of Arabian 



Queer Egyptian Customs 153 



merchandise below, latticed above to screen the immasked 
women of the home, and throughout the length of the drunken, 
staggering streets these latticed windows on opposite sides pro- 
jecting till they almost met ! The Mohammedan custom of 
feminine seclusion does not detain the fair ones at home; it 
only covers them up past possible recognition. In Constantino- 
ple they conceal their faces entirely, but in Cairo the instinct 
of womankind, whether Caucassian or Bedouin, to exhibit her 
charms has asserted itself until she has dropped her veil below 
the eyes, and the forehead and orbs are exposed. This veil is 
suspended by a string through a brass or silver thimble on her 
nose, a rig that is exceedingly ludicrous. The aristocratic la- 
dies show better taste in leaving the thimble off. 

The camel was of course mixed up in the general scene, and 
the donkey, too, was inevitable, the meek and lowly burden 
bearer of the Orient everywhere. Cigarettes were in nearly 
every mouth and coffee dens were frequent where natives were 
gathered in convivial and boisterous intercourse. Smallpox 
signs showed on many faces and diseases of vice and of filth had 
left their marks upon the features and persons of most of the 
men. There was the water carrier, too, with his hairy goat 
skin across his back, stopping now and then to deliver an in- 
stallment of his liquid stock bubbling from the neck of his ves- 
sel. Lemonade venders clinked their cups and hawked their 
merchandise. Boys with eggs and hunks of cheese, peddlers 
with dates, grapes and vegetables, or with cakes, cried out for 
purchas(^r:s. All this in a narrow street only a few feet wide 
and where the crowd was so thick that there was hardly room 
for another person. 

I looked in at a dive where a number of men were playing 
cards, dominoes and checkers, while a couple of disreputable 
women were beating a tambourine and sawing on a cocoanut 
fiddle, singing raucously meanwhile. At the end of each musi- 
cal rendition the men would grunt a long-drawn-out "Ah" of 
approval without looking up from their games. 

The peripatetic barber of Cairo, one of its oddest features, 
seems to have street privileges that others are not favored with. 
Selecting any location in the street that suits his fancy, this 



154 Six and One Abroad 



itinerant artist opens up for business, shaving any customer he 
may have while he sits cross-legged on the mat. After exhaust- 
ing the supply of victims which the vicinity affords, he changes 
location and bids for patronage in new quarters. The price 
of a shave and haircut is one piaster, which is equivalent to six 
cents in our money. The barber's right to possession of the 
street appears to be generally recognized, for traffic takes 
care not to interfere with his operations, though a novice un- 
der the razor would certainly become nervous lest the congested 
street overflow into the barber's territory. 

Now the Arabs do not constitute the whole of the native pop- 
ulation of Egypt. There are Ethiopians as well ; there are ne- 
groes so black that a piece of charcoal would make a white 
mark on them; there are Hottentots with their faces carved so 
elaborately that they look like animated mummies ; there are 
Soudanese — stalwart brown men from the Equator in blue or 
white night-shirts reaching to their feet ; there are Copts, who 
claim to be lineal descendants of the Pharoahs and their sub- 
jects and to have lived on the Nile continuously since those 
distant days. Then, to cap the climax, there are eunuchs, with- 
out mention of whom any story of Egyptian life would be in- 
complete. Always tremendously slender and tall, superlatively 
black and scrupulously dressed, this burlesque on humanity 
may be seen occasionally in charge of a detachment of white 
Turkish children, or at times, anon, wheeling a baby-buggy, 
but usually he is in evidence high up, stiff and vertical in col- 
ored clothes and vermillion fez, driving a carriage for an aristo- 
cratic Egyptian family. I happened to be standing one after- 
noon at the entrance to the bridge over the Nile where two 
great recumbent lions, emblematic of England's suzerainty, 
guarded the approach, when one of these eunuchs came dash- 
ing up. Attired in blue satin gown which was held in place 
by a wide yellow girdle, carrying a brass-mounted staff and 
sweating profusely, this foolish creature cried out in native 
dialect as he ran something that everybody understood to mean 
clear the way. Close behind came a spanking team of blacks 
driven by a second eunuch in livery to a carriage containing a 
lady in elegant dress and invisible white nose veil and a maid 



Queer Egyptian Customs 155 



holding a white sunshade over her. I wondered at the endur- 
ance of the runner and how long he could hold out. That he 
gloried in his autliority and esteemed the servile right-of-way 
that traffic gave him as ample compensation for the fatigue suf- 
fered was patent in his arrogant and ostentatious air. 

He was a "herald," a functionary of the native rich, whose 
duty it was whenever the family went out, to run ahead of the 
carriage and announce its coming. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

The World's Greatest Wonder. 

Some thirty-four hundred years ago there lived an Egyp- 
tian king whose native name was Rameses and whose royal 
alias was Pharaoh. He was an enterprising ruler but cruel in 
his exactions of forced labor from the subjects of his king- 
dom. He built great cities along the Nile and lined their ave- 
nues with sphinxes in granite and other monuments. Coming 
to the throne in his boyhood he reigned sixty-seven years. 
Among his subjects was a large and prolific tribe of people 
who, if not his actual slaves, were reduced to a condition of 
compulsory labor equivalent to servitude. There was race 
suicide in the higher classes then as now, and this Pharaoh 
foresaw in the rapid increase of his vassals their early pre- 
ponderance in numbers and the danger of a rebellion in which 
they might succeed. He resolved to forestall such an eventual- 
ity by a very simple though not altogether innocent plan; he 
would kill the male children of these people as fast as they 
were born. To escape this decree all sorts of schemes were 
resorted to by distracted mothers. How many succeeded we 
do not know ; but we know that one of them concealed her 
little one in the reeds of the Nile. A daughter of the king, 
looking for a secluded place to take a swim, came upon this 
babe, and the mother instinct asserting itself, she took it in 
charge and adopted it in the royal household. 

Since the occurrence of the events just related, Solomon, 
Elijah and all the Prophets and other noted characters of early 
sacred story, except Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their im- 
mediate descendants, have lived and died, and the history of 
the Hebrew race has been made and become a vague record, 
Alexander has conquered the world, the Roman government 
has come into existence, grown to illustrious proportions and 
reeled to its decay, and all the old kings and celebrities of 
whose careers we read are dead and their bones resolved into 
the dust from which they sprang. 



The World's Greatest Wonder 157 



And yet the other day I stood by a glass case in the museum 
of Cairo and looked into the eyes, and into the face, a face 
almost as well preserved as if the spark of life had departed 
from it yesterday, of this Pharaoh. It was the veritable body 
of the ancient king who reared Moses to manhood and op- 
pressed his people to tlie point of rebellion. Wrapped in a 
shroud more than thirty centuries old and preserved by an art 
that perished with his civilization, his head scarcely marred 
by the chisel of time and every feature intact, his half-open 
blue eyes peeping at the curious throngs as if aroused from 
heavy sleep and wondering at his strange surroundings, this 
mummied figure is, in my humble opinion, the most remark- 
able sight, natural or artificial, in the world today. Surprised 
into a mood of historical reverie I felt almost as if I were in 
the actual presence of a Pharaoh in his palace in the rudi- 
mentary epochs when the world was young and men were 
mental and religious children. Those fixed blue eyes as though 
he Avere trying to open them from a long, long stupor, the 
sloping brow, the curved nose, the lips half open as if about 
to speak in answer to our sighs of wonder and queries as to his 
career, the lustrous maroon of his complexion, his close-cropped 
hair not yet despoiled of its brilliant gloss, how miraculously as 
natural as the corpse of a day in our time ! 

Rameses was found only a few years ago, in 1890 I believe 
it was, in a very peculiar and accidental way. An Arab, dig- 
ging in the sand near Thebes, struck an opening which he 
uncovered and investigated. Shrewd enough to understand that 
he had hit upon something valuable, he attempted to conceal 
the discovery until he could appropriate to himself whatever 
it contained. Ilis companions becoming aware that he had 
struck a mysterious shaft, he admitted the fact but pretended 
to have found in it some desperate evil spirit, which informa- 
tion was sufficient to keep his fellow Arabs out and quieted 
their suspicions. To give additional color to his story he threw 
a donkey into the pit one night and fenced the animal off 
from view, and it was easy enough thereafter to convince 
all the natives who visited the place that it did really con- 
tain evil spirits. By this ruse he managed to get away with 



158 Six and One Abroad 



some valuable treasures the pit contained and to dispose of 
them with considerable profit to himself. Of course the news 
was not long in reaching the Egyptologists who were making 
excavations in the locality, and their suspicions becoming 
aroused, they made an investigation. One of them, Brugsh 
Bey, describes his experience upon entering the tomb, for 
tomb it proved to be, as follows : ' ' My astonishment was so 
overpowering that I scarcely knew whether I was awake or 
only in a mocking dream. Resting on a coffin in order to 
recover from my intense excitement, I mechanically cast my 
eyes over the coffin lid, and distinctly saw the name of Seti 
I the father of Rameses II, both belonging to the nineteenth 
dynasty. A few steps further on in a simple coffin, with his 
hands crossed on his breast lay Rameses II. The farther I 
advanced the greater the wealth displayed : Thirty-six cof- 
fins, all belonging to kings and queens, princes and prin- 
cesses." 

So natural and lifelike Avas this old monarch in his little 
decorated box that I was prompted to ask him about the un- 
told things in the career of the Israelites who dislodged the 
mammoth blocks of stone from the solid sides of the hills and 
sledded them under snapping muscles across the sands till 
they lay in massive and enduring symmetry in the monuments 
he builded. His wife, a queenly mummy by his side with a 
smile of royal vanity, as well preserved almost as he, might 
have told it all, as a woman usually does, had we irreverently 
pressed her for the story. Symmetry. Wonderful, these 
corpses of royalty ! And there were others. The next Pharaoh, 
who would not let his people go until ten plagues in suc- 
cession had softened his stubbornness, and who reconsidered 
and gave them chase until his pursuing soldiers perished in the 
sea, this Pharaoh, too, was found asleep in his tomb and trans- 
ferred to more airy and commodious quarters in the museum. 
The identification of these Pharaohs and of all the other pickled 
kings, queens, princes and princesses in this excavators' morgue 
is complete ; their deeds are writ on the very coffins in which 
they lie ; and if the skeptic doubts the story of Moses let him 



The World's Greatest Wonder 159 



stand in the presence of these ancient dead and read the verifi- 
cation of the Bibzle narrative. 

After looking upon these men and women, hut little worsted 
by their long imprisonment, there was scant interest to be 
found in the multitude of granite sphinxes in the various rooms 
of the museum, or in the incomprehensible characters carved 
sometimes on obelisks and painted sometimes elaborately in 
colors on sarcophagi and mummy cases, or in the erudelv 
wrought likenesses of Egyptians in kilts, with big almond eyes, 
napkins on their heads, and feet and head at uncomfortable 
right-angles to their bodies, or in those strange 'figures of 
hawks' heads on human bodies, or in the jewelry, scarabs and 
pottery numerously displayed. It was all as bric-a-brac to a 
startling feat in legerdemain, this museum bric-a-brac in com- 
parison with the legerdemain of the mummies. 

And now we have come to the end of the program, by gen- 
eral consent the climax of all that is best to be seen in Egypt. 

In that inflexible ukase which was issued each morning 
from the council of ministers and gentleman — the program of 
the day — on this particular day the museum had first place 
merely as a preface to the greater event of the Pyramids. The 
Museum was in nonpareil ; the Pyramids in pica. Individually, 
and strictly as orbiter dicta, I found the preface to be greater 
tha^i the prefaced. ]\Iummies are more wonderful than a rock 
pile; the embalmer of the builder greater than the builder he 
embalmed ; Pharaoh in rags and spices more marvelous than 
his stupendous demonstration in solid geometry, his or his 
kin's on the bank of the Nile — the clerical majority and r.iost 
everybody else to the contrary notwithstanding. 

The Pyramids — not, mark you, the pyramids (little p) of 
Egypt, for Egypt has perhaps a hundred pyramids — but the 
Pj'ramids (capital P) of Cairo, Avhich are pre-eminent over 
the whole tribe of Egyptian pyramids, are situated six miles 
from the city of Cairo on the west side of the river, a fine 
paved road leading to them from the Bridge under the inter- 
locking branches of crooked-trunked, angular-limbed trees all 
the way. An electric car line offers an optional route. 

Now an electric car and the Pvramids Avas an anachronism 



160 



Six and One Abroad 



not to be tolerated and we scorned the impertinent trolley 
for a carriage of ancient vintage and driver of Ethiopian de- 
scent. On and near the Bridge we met numbers of camels on 
tlieir way to the market from the green fields of the valley 
with burdens of alfalfa so large that they obscured all the 
animal but the ugly lower joints, ungainly head and rubber 
neck. 
Through the foliage as we progressed, the immense triangles 




AN ALFALFA TRANSPORT COMING INTO CAIRO. 



grew upon the view, more and more, until at the edge of the 
sand where the Sahara rises for its stupendous sweep to the 
Atlantic they towered in majesty and grace up to the very 
burning dome of the sky, two of them the ancient original 
couple and the third so small that it looked like a sprout that 
might have sprung up in later years from the union of the 
first primeval pair. 

The ascent to their bases was too steep for the carriages to 
negotiate or else the fee we had paid was not steep enough 
to prolong the ride that far. At any rate, we did not care, and 



The World's Greatest Woyider 161 



leaping from the earriage, we ran, almost consumed with in- 
terest, along the spiral sandy course, lighting our way through 
white-gowned guides who besought us for employment. 

Ah, what a tremendous structure is old Cheops; Thirteen 
acres of rock his great base, his summit 480 feet above the 
ground, and that, too, with forty feet of his original top miss- 
ing. His massiveness is made up of units of stone propor- 
tioned in size to the positions they occupy, those at and near 
the base being of immense dimensions, the others diminishing 
in size geometrically till they dwindle to small units at the 
top. Originally the four triangular sides were covered with a 
veneer of polished slabs of red granite, but these were taken 
away by the kaliphs to be used in the construction of public 
buildings hundreds of years ago. An Arabian writer speaks 
of this vandalism and tells how "people without sense," the 
workmen of the son of Saladin, did their utmost to tear down 
the third and smallest pyramid, but as they could only dis- 
lodge two stones a day, the work proved too costly and was 
abandoned. "When the historian asked one of the workmen if 
he would put one of the stones in place again for a thousand 
pieces of gold, his reply was that he could not do so were 
the reward a thousand times a thousand pieces of gold. 

With all the depredations, however, which the ages have 
made upon these venerable piles, there is no considerable de- 
preciation of their first grandeur and imposing magnificence. 
They stand today practically in all respects as they stood 
when nearly four thousand years ago they received the 
mummied bodies of the kings who ])uilded them. Their sur- 
faces are rough, their corners ragged from the inconsequential 
crowbars of the kaliphs, but this rugged exterior, these petty 
tamperings only emphasize the tremendous solidity and in- 
ertia of the structures and assure their endurance to the day 
when every mountain and monument shall crumble into frag- 
ments and be dumped into the scrap pile of Eternity. 

But they are foolish things, these Pyramids, monuments to 
the pride and folly of a king who dreaded oblivion and sought 
by such pompous procedure to bridge the chasm of forgetful- 
ness. He succeeded in bridging the dreaded chasm, but of 



162 Six and One Abroad 

what avail is it to him now when the modern world looks into 
his dried and bloodless face and he can neither correct their 
criticisms Avith a word from his shriveled tongue nor accept 
their flatteries with a smile? What a fearful expenditure of 
muscle and of means it must have required to build theml 
What multitudes of men groaning under burdens they could 
scarcely bear ! What rivers of sweat ; what streams of blood 
running from the overseer 's lash ! 

The entrance to Cheops was formerly quite concealed, only 
the priests knowing where to find the movable stone that would 
admit them. But it is open now and the interior may be ex- 
plored by any who care to attempt it. It so happened that I 
had this unusual experience alone, the clergy being at the 
time occupied in taking measurements of the basic stones. 
The narrow tunnel which conducted to the mysterious interior 
was some thirty inches high and wide, and of course I could 
neither stand nor sit, but falling upon my elbows slid feet 
forward down the tunnel for 320 feet, one guide holding my 
feet, three others tugging at my hands and head, and all of 
them pressing their toes into little slick concavities to prevent 
a plunge to certain death at the end of the channel. It was 
desperately hot. There was no air, and the sound of the 
strange voices of the guides and their faces gleaming grue- 
somely in the glimmer of the candles which they carried "filled 
me, thrilled me with fantastic terrors no mortal ever had be- 
fore." 

At the first landing a huge block of granite had fallen from 
its place and blocked the passage and I trembled as I thought 
of the relation of this individual stone to the whole structure 
and of the effect of the dislocation and what my own chances 
would be in case of a catastrophe. 

Up another grade of some thirty degrees for a distance of 
another 320 feet along another narrow sepulchral channel just 
as hot and oppressive as the first one we had navigated with 
such difficulty, and we came to a chamber some twenty feet 
square and high where we could at least stand erect. This 
was explained to be the tomb of a Pharaoh. The guides struck 
a magnesium light and I was enabled to read the hieroglyphics 



The World's Greatest Wonder 163 



oil the walls with niucli interest. Nothing gives me more pleas- 
ure tlian reading hieroglyphics. I used to write them myself 
when I was a very small child. 

That's all there was inside; jnst the midnight den and its 
execrahie approach. 

Again outside, soaked with perspiration and blinded by 
the territie brilliancy of the daylight in contrast with the 
Plutonian darkness of Cheops' bowels, I found the Doctors 
resting from their measurements of the rocks. They had the 
exact sizes noted down in their books — some fifteen feet long, 
others twenty feet, some thirty feet ; width and depth four, 
five, six and eight feet, and so on. They were having spasms 
over the miraculous cleverness of the Egyptians in quarrying, 
transporting and placing these enormous units of stone. 

And then during a lucid interval in their ravings we es- 
sayed to join a party and climb to the top of the big pyramid. 
It is an easy matter, though attended with some fatigue, to 
dim)) up by the ragged corners. One is not allowed to make 
the ascent unattended, for the Egyptian government needs the 
money and the guides can use what fees fall their way. And 
so it happened that we fell among thieves and were robbed 
of several francs apiece by the long-shirted rascals "who did 
nothing but follow along and help certain rheumatics of the 
climbing party and certain terrified maidens who with many 
a scream and flutter and disarrangement of lingerie leaped and 
fell from rock to rock. This ragged stairway is not a made-to- 
order affair, but is the very useful result of the spoliation by 
the kaliphs, hereinbefore mentioned. 

The outlook from the flat summit of this master monument 
was M^orth all the effort of the ascent. The prospect Avas 
radiant with the glow of an uninterrupted midday sun, and 
the blue-gray dome of the sky trembled with the fervor of 
an oven that is never cooled. Far to the west and to the 
soutli the unwatered wastes of Sahara sw^ept in barren l)illows 
till they touched the rim of the sky and scorched it into colors 
of orange and brown and purple. The muddy Nile was slug- 
gishly ensconced in a bed of green of its own creation, so long, 
so straight, that scarcely a coil could be seen, and we could 



164 Six and One .Abroad 



not guess whence it came yonder out of the violet haze nor 
whither it went yonder in the spreading delta of dissolving 
fields and cities. And Cairo in sensuous dashing dress ex- 
posed her charms voluptuously at our feet. 

We must have remained an hour, at least, on the top of this, 
the world's greatest monument, with our feet dangling over the 
rough parapet, or walking carefully upon the uneven floor. 
The Doctors took advantage of the opportunity to journalize 
their deductions from the stone measurements. Each of the 
six committed to the sacred pages of his little book the solemn 
asseveration that it was "marvelous" beyond human compre- 
hension, how the ancients built the Pyramids. That no me- 
chanics, nor machinery, nor engineering tricks known to the 
present age could possibly have transported the great stones 
of which the Pyramids were built from the quarries twenty 
miles across the river or from Assuan up the river a hundred 
miles, and hoisted them to their places. And then to complete 
the superlative comparison they closed their tribute with the 
old tourist chestnut that the art has been lost and we are left 
to grope in ignorance of it. Alas and alack ! 

The preachers were under the influence of a spell that seizes 
nearly all travelers and causes enlargement of the eye and 
degeneration of the understanding. Now, I am no mechanic 
— never built a structure other than an occasional air castle — 
am phlegmatic, and critical too, I guess, and maybe a bit 
iconoclastic, inclined to run counter to the accepted order, and 
all that. But after seeing the Pyramids of Cairo and after 
hearing the verdict of the Doctors, I ventured to write a dis- 
senting opinion in my heterogeneous journal, and I respect- 
fully submit it here for endorsement to any reputable Ameri- 
can engineer, in haec verba, to-wit : "There is no ground for 
extravagant praise of ancient Egyptian mechanics and skill. 
Their mechanics was muscle pure and simple. A couple of 
hundred negroes ahold of a rope could draw any rock in any 
of the Pyramids over all Egypt. If two hundred were insuffi- 
cient then two hundred thousand could have done it. A dozen 
Egyptians with crowbars could have tumbled the cubes from 
their origin to their destination, not easily nor quickly to be 



The World's Greatest Wonder 165 

sure, but anyliow in the course of years. Over the mounds of 
sand that answered the purpose of scaffokling the rocks were 
roHed by physical forc(% supplemented by the lever power 
with which they were familiar. That is all there is to it, and to 
assume that the ancient builders were in possession of me- 
chanical ai)])liances and superior scientific knowledge which 
liave been lost and never equalled, is absurd. The steam and 
electricity of the present could build a pyramid twice as high 
as Cheops in half the time that was required for his con- 
struction. ]\rore than that, plenty of contractors in the United 
States would gladly undertake to mount old Cheops on jacks 
and move him all over Egypt without l.reaking a stone or dis- 
turbing a .joint, were the compensation sufficient. This is not 
exaggeration, for the same skill that can move a six-story 
brick building down a hill with thirty per cent, grade, and 
up another such hill, without loosening a brick, as I have seen 
done in Boston, could handle the Pyramids in the same way^ 
and bring them even across the ocean, if ships large enough, 
for their transportation could be supplied, and they would be 
supplied all right if the money was in sight." 

The Sphinx is yonder, only a stone's throw distant— vener- 
able, lonesome old pioneer ; suppose we submit the riddle to 
him and inquire what he may know of mysterious Egyptian 
history and mechanics. How serious he looks, how oblivious 
of his surroundings, how homesick for his people, gone these 
forty centuries and more. Head erect, half submerged in the 
sand, this mysterious veteran of the desert, deaf to all in- 
quiries and as reticent as all his race are reputed to be, he 
heeds not the curious throngs that look upon him every day 
in the year and snap their kodaks impudently in his face in a 
continual volley, and Avith wide-open eyes and immobile fea- 
tures he gazes absent-mindedly over their heads toward the 
rising sun, serene and placid, biding the time when he, the 
oldest statue of the earth, shall be the last to be shaken by the 
thunders of Judgment. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

Street Life of Naples. 

''Sunny Italy" — land of purple mornings and radiant noons 
and hazel twilights, of soft sea winds, of amorous sun and 
faultless equipoise of seasons, of seductive rendezvous and 
palm-shaded haunts, land of romance and story, of history and 
fable, of peoples great and peoples insignificant ; land where 
stilettos flash in the climax of deep-laid plots and unholy 
amours flourish like vegetation in the wooing sun ; land of 
incomparable scenery — "Sunny Italy" was our next engage- 
ment. The connoisseur was happy over the prospect of great 
picture galleries to explore, and the preachers were joyful 
over the opportunity soon to be theirs to die with the Chris- 
tian martyrs in the Colosseum and sleep with them in the 
catacombs and to suffer in chains with Paul in the Mamertine 
prison. 

The Bay of Naples was in its best receptive mood — placid, 
in blue dress and violet veil. "What a charming union of 
mountain in refined and tasteful green with the Bay in comely 
habit of blue and pearls of gleaming tint and flounces of 
rarest design and shade ! With what grace of slope and ease 
of extending arms did the mountain enfold his bride, loveliest 
child of the Mediterranean, a Helen that no Paris could steal 
and no voluptuous god violate. 

The music? We had expected it, or at least it seemed an 
appropriate reception to somnolent, sensuous Italy — the sing- 
ing of a skiff-load of dark-eyed Pattis and their rampant and 
riotous kicking to every angle of vision, including any who 
might be overhead, and an inverted umbrella to receive the 
encores of silver showered down, depleting the pockets of the 
preachers. 

While the clerical majority was thus pleasantly engaged my 
own unwayward eyes had fallen upon a great blue-black peak, 
isolated from its companions of the mountain chain and at 
rest against the purple wainscoting of the sky. It was smok- 



Street Life of Naples 167 



ing — a bad habit for men and a worse one for mountains — 
the smoke rising in blue curls out of its shaggy top and eloping 
with the vagrant winds — disappearing ere it had time to as- 
sume shape and form. With truncated chimney like a great 
ash heap, fluted and riven by the fiery chisels of its own 
eruptions, Vesuvius is the central and commanding feature of 
the panorama of Naples and vicinity, and however the eye 
may wander along the green vertebrated line of hills or upon 
the variation of villas and villages, or out upon the dreamy 
sea merging its modest color and sheen with the violet of the 
sky or lazily lapping the pebbly beach, it will always return 
to this historic old volcano with its smoking chimney, its his- 
tory of repeated disasters and its possibilities of violence to 
come — always, unless diverted by some Italian girl in a state 
of eruption, in competition with whom a volcano, however 
noted, has little favor. 

T>xe city of Naples, in some respects, is quite modern and 
commonplace. It has modern buildings, civilized streets, up-to- 
date shops and stores, street cars, horses and carriages. Arabs 
and gowned Egyptians and indolent camels had all vanished 
into the limbo of recollection and a new and assorted variety 
of men and things appeared in the cyclorama of this western 
life. The main streets are wide and when the storekeepers 
are not sprinkling them, the wind is hoisting the dust and 
scattering it broadcast. The water-wagon has not yet arrived 
in Naples. Occasional fountains are playing in occasional 
piazzas, and every wisp of spurting water is gurgling from a 
fish's open mouth or pouring from a cup in a mermaid's tresses, 
or from some mythological beast in stone or iron. It is strictly 
Neapolitan to have everything elaborately ornamented. The 
stones in the buildings are never merely plain and beveled; 
that would be vulgar; but the high store fronts are decorated 
by the chisel and the plastic creations of the mould. Once 
away from the principal thoroughfares, though, and the streets 
become orientally narrow, picturesquely crooked and quaintly 
interesting in the small scale upon which business is trans- 
acted. 

The city is built upon the mountain slope and is nowhere 



168 Six and One Ahroad 



approximately level except near the water's edge. It curves, 
with the horseshoe bend of the shore, and mounts the steep in- 
clines, occupying the dangerous tops of cliffs and clinging to 
the abrupt hillsides. In its very center a mountain rises sheer 
and perpendicular to a height of several hundred feet, its 
front a rough untouched surface of solid rock, its rear receding- 
into the Apennine chain that comes up from beyond Vesuvius 
and winds through the middle of Italy till it joins the Alps. 
An elevator is in operation from the base of this steep hill to 
its summit where the outlook is charming in the superlative- 
degree. 

In the tall tenements near the wharfs, the lazarone lives and 
plies his occupation of petty theft and begging. Eight and 
ten-story buildings are filled with families of the poor, and 
the streets are so narrow that the laundry of these " miserables "' 
is swung across them, and this unquestionably is the queerest 
feature of Naples. Looking along the deep cut chasms to 
where they bend out of sight these festoons of homely linen, 
flapping in the breeze, here, there and all the way from bottoiu 
to top ; and then walking underneath the strange spectacle, to- 
see between the pendent things the heads of black-haired 
women at work in the rooms, and children scantily clothed at 
play in the bed of the channel or in the pent-up little homes 
inside; it's novel. Now and then a Dago rolls his cart of vege- 
tables or fish slowly along with his head turned up toward the 
towering tenement tops, crying aloud his wares, and occasion- 
ally a woman sends down a basket or bucket to be filled with 
raw materials for dinner, announcing from her lofty perch 
what she wants. Long distance trading. 

The Neapolitan dairy system is the most sanitary in the- 
world. It has no wagons nor bottles, nor is the source of sup- 
ply either prided holsteins or meek-eyed jerseys. It's just 
goats. I was walking along the canyon of one of the streets 
of flapping linen one morning when I gave right-of-way to a. 
small herd of goats. Curiosity led me to follow these, my 
friends of the Mediterranean. 

It is goats and donkeys all the way around the great mid- 
land sea; everywhere — in Spain, Northern Africa, Malta,. 



street Life of Nftples 169 



Greece, Turkey, Palestine, Egypt, and even here at Naples— 
the donkey is the burden bearer of the great majority and the 
goat the main reliance for support. And now abide the 
donkey, the goat and the native — these three ; but the greatest 
of these is the donkey — and second in the scale is the goat. 

Feeling somehow that I was witnessing the last incident of 
the kind it should be my privilege to witness again on earth, 
and surely the last of this trip, and drawn by the charm of 
long association with them, I could not resist the suggestion 
of curiosity to follow my friends and learn their mission. In 
a few moments the driver halted his herd and threw his voice 
into a fourth-story window where a disarranged feminine head 
quickly appeared, and while the woman of the disarranged 
head was lowering the primitive elevator the man at the bot- 
tom of the canyon was hunkered down and vigorously ex- 
tracting the contents of the udder of a nanny, operating from 
behind. This customer having received her milk fresh off the 
bat, the herd resumed its movements to the next station, a 
lead goat knowing the route and directing the itinerary. With 
wiggling tails and bol)])ing heads and udders full and drag- 
ging the pavement they turned into an opening, and curious 
to relate, clambered right up a flight of stairs till they came 
to the second floor of the apartments — I following keenly in- 
terested — and stopped in the hall to permit the driver to milk 
one of them and make deliveries. No need of a pure food law 
■- "'■ ■ '^•- no danger of watering the milk. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

Pompeii. 

It is fourteen miles by rail or trolley from Naples to Pompeii. 
The soil of the country intervening is a mixture of the vomit 
of Vesuvius and the alluvium of the hills, being exceedingly 
fertile, and everything from a vegetable to a vineyard grows 
rich and rank upon it. A few minutes before reaching the 
exhumed city we stopped at the site of Herculaneum which 
went into extinction at the same time as its sister city. Through 
a strange freak of the volcano, Herculaneum was sewed up in 
a preparation of molten stuff which, when it cooled, congealed 
into the hardest of stone called lava, while Pompeii met its 
fate in a deluge of pure ashes and cinders. That accounts, it 
is said, for the fact that Pompeii is being exhumed, and that 
Herculaneum must wait for the crowbar and dynamite of a 
later time. 

It sounded strange, the screech of the locomotive ; it looked 
strange, the whirling train of cars ; it felt strange, that we 
of this day could step from modern power-driven vehicles that 
would startle Cicero and Caesar were they to awake and see 
them, and walk into the open homes of men and women as 
they left them nearly two thousand years ago never to return. 

A grove of green olives contrasted pleasingly with the smutty 
opening in the wall — the Marine Gate it is called — and through 
this grove and damp and gloomy gate we entered, climbing a 
steep pavement which bore the traffic of the long ago, watch- 
ed, as we passed, by a statue of Minerva that has guarded 
the entrance through all the vicissitudes of fire and quake and 
centuries of burial. 

And then we stood, as thoughtful visitors always stand, 
speechless in the thrall of the scene before us — a dead city : 
a city buried and embalmed nineteen centuries ago, and now 
its grave clothes removed and its features exposed to view. 
I wondered if history were not in error as to its dates and that 
if it were not really yesterday that a happy multitude of people 



Pompeii 171 

jangled tlie bells of industry and ran the scales of pleasure 
there; only yesterday that the devils broke loose from yonder 
mountain with hrands of fire and scuttles of pumice and l)urned 
the city and l)uried the remains. Vesuvius was still smoking, 
the houses ready for repair and reoccupaney, the pavements 
showing the wear of wheels, the door-sides soiled by the touch 
of greasy hands, the counters of wine shops showing the stain 
of glasses, well-curbings chafed and deepcut l)y oft-used ropes; 
these and a thousand other tokens of the every-day life made 
it hard to believe that we were looking upon the corpse of a 
city that perished in its prime a few years after Jesus wrought 
his miracles in Galilee. The same paved streets upon which 
Cicero walked, the same street w^el'.s from which the Romans 
drank, the same stores where they bought and sold, the same 
theaters where they listened to plays, the same amphitheater 
where they saw the cruelties of the combats between men and 
between men and beasts, the same temples where they wor- 
shiped in a way, the same bakeries, wine shops and houses 
of tad repute which they frequented, are there today just as 
they were left in the hurry and confusion nearly nineteen cen- 
turies ago, only a little the worse for their unusual experience. 
How sensation follows sensation and thrill as one stands, say 
at the ]\larket Place, and looks, silently looks, for it is im- 
possible to speak except in whispers as one would do in the 
presence of the dead; looks up the silent streets where 
rambling tourists peer into the vacant shops and theorize upon 
the habits of a race that conquered the Avorld only to fall a 
helpless victim to a mountain's illness; up the sloping thor- 
oughfares where maimed statues sit serenely unconscious of 
Time's destructive vicissitudes, and empty temples and courts, 
dumb for nineteen centuries, are trying to speak to us now 
of the old days with their remnants of former grandeur. Then 
to ramble along with no aim but to see what happens to cross 
the vision, to note the evidences of every-day life, the little 
things tliat history omits, the tracks of chariot w-heels on the 
floor of the streets, the wine jars in the cellars, the pictures 
on the walls of deserted homes, the crude marks made by 
children on furniture as our own children do today", the lasciv- 



172 Six and One Abroad 



ious drawings of libertines in dens of vice — the bed rooms of 
these dens containing drawings so indecent that only the male 
members of a party are taken in to see them — oh, Pompeii 
was a wicked place ; was worldly, sensual, intemperate — and 
after seeing the caricatures on the walls of private rooms, the 
bold exposure of sex in statues, and the unthinkable sex signs 
displayed publicly by resorts on the Lupercal, I doubt not that 
Providence, if Providence really rewards virtue and punishes 
vice, first threatened poor wayward Pompeii by the earth- 
quake of '63 and then, despairing of its repentance, peremptor- 
ily destroyed it with the catastrophe of '79. 

Pompeii evidently was to Rome what Atlantic City is to New 
York. It had its beach where bathers reveled in the surf, 
its amphitheater of gruesome memory, and its theaters. The 
beach is buried under twenty-odd feet of pumice and ashes; 
the amphitheater is a great empty shell now eloquently idle 
on the city's outskirts; the theaters, though the seats could 
be filled every day, even now, could the old players reappear 
and react their plays, are closed and unused, it's a safe guess, 
forever. I sat upon the hard, merciless bleachers of one of 
these queer open-air theaters and undertook an imaginary re- 
production of the stage, the actors, orchestra, audience and 
performance, but the effort was so handicapped by a battery of 
stone from underneath and a broadside of sunlight from over- 
head that it met with poor success. The only feature of the 
original scene I felt certain I had guessed correctly was that 
the cushion boys must have done a thriving business and that 
an overhead curtain, though necessarily a monstrously un- 
wieldy contrivance, must have been a refreshing reality. 

There was no residence district to Pompeii. It was annoy- 
ing to us, the problem of how and where the 20,000 citizens: 
managed to live in this little hemmed up area of less than a 
single square mile. Scattered here and there among the busi- 
ness shops, and occasionally out in what by strained metaphor 
might be called the suburts, the homes of the aristocracy of 
Pompeii have been uncovered in a striking state of preserva- 
tion; where and what the nature of the quarters of the poor 
were Vesuvius has left us little upon which to build a con- 



Pompeii 173 

jectiuH". 1 declare, one feels, on entering one of these deserted 
residenet's, as if he expected to meet the queerly dressed gentle- 
men who last occupied them, and who own them yet for that 
nmtter, could they or their heirs appear and prove title. With 
slight variations, all are alike in general plan — an unpreten- 
tious door; a short hall; a spacious square court flooded with 
skylight, tlie floor thereof worked into geometric designs, in 
its center always a basin, often a statue-fountain; on either 
side of the court, bed rooms; in the rear the dining room and 
kitchen ; and still beyond often a third open court where the 
lady of the house kept her pot plants and trained her vines, 
and gossiped with her neighbors. 

What a queer feeling of nobody at home and of trespassing 
one experiences in these remarkable homes I Did we see on 
the threshold, traced in marble, the cordial word: "Wel- 
come?" Perhaps so, but it was a lie, we were not ''welcome," 
though to be sure it was a pathetic fact that we were not un- 
welcome ; and we prowled on tiptoe from apartment to apart- 
ment and from fresco to mosaic with the snrreptition of a 
L-neak, half fearful lest the owner return and indignantly 
eject us. 

The furniture, ])ric-a-brac, dishes and what-not of house- 
keeping had joined the wholesale hegira of all the movable 
contents of homes and shops to the museums, and every woman 
and ever scion of woman, whether woman or not, finds in 
these treasure houses the chief gratification of curosity in 
Pompeii and Naples. Not anywhere in all the w^orld is there 
such an edifying and interesting collection of the handwork 
of ancient peoples, such a clue to their manners and customs 
as in these museums. There is no reason why we should, but 
somehow we had supposed these forefathers of ours lived 
differently frcm us and in a very inferior state. But a ramble 
through the mus;eums of Pompeiian antiquities will have the 
effect of reducing this exalted notion of ourselves. Name any 
vessels of common household use and the chances are that it 
can be duplicated or excelled by an article used for a similar 
purpose in Pompeii nineteen hundred years ago. There are 
divans, glass pitchers, tumblers, candelabra, hand-painted 



174 



Six and One Ahroid 




Ponipeii 175 

wood and china, dolls, kitchen cabinets, steelyards, scales, 
lamps, door latches, locks, nails, bolts, colors and pigments, 
bottles, pins, bells, bridles, buckets, chains, hinges, pocket 
knives, forks, spoons, plates, saucers, pans, table knives, pens, 
ink and paper, trowels, surgeons', butchers' and artists' tools, 
combs, jewelry, blacksmiths', carpenters' and sculptors' instru- 
ments, books, needles, baskets, funnels, etc. The similarity 
of these articles to our own is positively shocking to our 
twentieth century vanity. Indeed, I had supposed we were 
the discoverers of the art of plumbing, and w^as surprised to 
see in the wreck of this old town gas pipe of different sizes, 
with unions, T 's and hose bibs over which ours were apparently 
no improvement. There are ladies' toilet articles galore, most 
of them resembling mi-lady's of today, there are rings, brace- 
lets and necklaces which fair ones wore then that would arouse 
envy in the swellest circles now, there are iron safes which 
ancient avarice used, mirrors in which preparation was made 
for the theater and amphitheater, there are theater tickets and 
announcements, there are loaves of bread of the same profile 
and texture as those which are produced in the bake-shops of 
today, except that they are a bit harder and more indigestible, 
there is horses' harness, and chairs that were in waiting in 
the parlor, there are skeletons of tiny chicks, of mice, of cows 
and swine, and snakes and tortoises, each a rattling good clew 
to the mystery of Pompeiian life, which by the way, with 
these revelations is not such a mystery after all. 

That they had cooks in those days wdio were equal to the 
demands of the most fastidious epicures is proven by a certain 
fine plump cake that found its way into the Museum from the 
dining room of a Pompeiian merchant. What a fine specimen 
of culinary skill it is? Exactly of similar shape and size to 
those our best cooks prepare, several strata high, bulging watli 
leaven, covered with icing and bearing the mark of some orna- 
ment on its top, a slice missing out of a triangular section of 
its side, crumbs on the plate and the very knife at hand that 
produced them, this cake comes as near actually speaking to 
us of the domestic life of those early days and of the hurry and 
alarm which followed the eruption as any of the dumb relics 



176 



Six and One Abroad 




Pompeii 177 

of that remarkable morgue. It should be added, though, that 
it is black with age and hard as sandstone now, and doubt- 
less as unpalatable. 

Then, there is flour, and a kind of grits, and nuts in 
abundance, salt and spices and sundry indispensibles of the 
pantry, each black with carbonization but maintaining its 
original shape and easily identified from its similarity to cor- 
responding articles of the present time. 

But by far the most interesting feature of Pompeii is the 
human beings that have been dug from the ashes. Only a 
little over half of the city appears to have been exhumed and 
yet, it is officially asserted, more than six hundred human 
skeletons have been found. An account of the pressing cir- 
cumstances that delayed these unfortunates until it was too 
late to escape would make an interesting story if we but knew 
it. But in lieu of the written story, thanks to a lucky dis- 
covery, we are enabled to guess quite accurately, we think, 
the tragic circumstances that attended their dissolution. By 
a clever scheme of withdrawing the bones from the cavity 
where a skeleton was found and refilling the cavity with ce- 
ment or plaster, the original shape of the body has been pre- 
served as well as a perfect likeness of the features at the 
moment of death, and a fac simile of every outside garment, of 
rings on the fingers and ornaments in the hair. The plastic 
ashes formed a mould about the body and caught for our in- 
formation the facial lineaments of fear, of misery and despair, 
and nothing in all the world is hardly so thrilling as that 
display of gray, unmoving Pompeiians in the dumb reproduc- 
tion of the tortures of their death. Like the purple tenants 
of a morgue those ancient dead lie in perpetual state, un- 
shrouded and uncovered, yet unlike any corpse that was ever 
seen before, rehearsing in silence the wretched manner of their 
taking ofl:'; some with arms shielding their eyes from the 
cinders or extended in supplication to the gods; others with 
hands clinched and muscles tense and legs drawn back from 
the heat of the ashes ; one or two with placid faces and passive 
limbs indicative of complete resignation ; the features and 
forms of all admirably preserved ; the hair of the women done 



178 Six and One Abroad 

up in Roman fashion not unlike the coiffures of the women 
of today, but disarranged evidently in the excitement of 
the catastrophe. A woman en ciente could not leave her 
bed, and forsaken by her husband and friends, if indeed she 
had either, was left to perish, and an almost perfect fac simile 
of her figure and condition is left to indict the cruel ones who 
forsook her. 

A sentinel (or soldier, maybe) died faithfully at his post, 
and the ashes cooling about his body kept an excellent cast of 
his tunic and of his resolute and noble face. 

A dog with the instinctive loyalty of his kind remained by 
his master's side and perished with him. It would have been 
easy for this dog to escape the falling cinders and make his 
get away with the hurrying throngs. Men deserted their sick, 
their very kin, but according to the circumstantial evidence of 
a remarkable cast of this noble animal he was faithful to the 
end. All doubled and distorted in the spasms of his death, this 
cast, so pathetic, so realistic, so wonderfully perfect, arrests 
the attention of visitors more than any other relic of those 
unhappy days and calls out more remarks of admiration and 
pity. 

I left the desolate, deserted and dead old city by way of the 
Street of Tombs, and lingered among its monuments to read 
the epitaphs of the rich departed. This street was the Fifth 
Avenue of Pompeii's aristrocratic dead, where the living en- 
deavored by ceremonial and display to project the vain pomp 
and glory of this existence into the next. Beneath the cold 
monuments, unconscious of the city's lapse into a long sleep, 
the tenants of this royal street have kept their palaces un- 
changed. 

The dead within the dead. 

Oh, Time, Thou Destroyer of men and of every glory-gilded 
darling of their hands, how ruthlessly dost Thou erase the 
puny scrawls of Fame and dump the achievements of epochs 
and of ages into Thy abyss of oblivion. And with Pompeii's 
fate before us, as well as the rise and fall of every individual 
career, the breath of birth, the flutter of life and the shriek 
of grief at the grave, "Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be 
proud 1 ' ' 



CHAPTER XX. 

348 Kilometers to Rome. 

"All aboard for Rome." 

This announcement did not proceed from the lips of a rail- 
road official of Italian persuasion — 'tis not the Italian custom — 
but it was the boisterous overflow of the minority member of 
the party of clergymen and gentleman. It sounded very, very 
strange. 

A Neapolitan railway station is a structure of strange parts 
to an American, though it is not so miich so to an Englishman 
or a traveler from the continent, for it differs but little from 
his own at home. The waiting room is sul)dividod into three 
compartments, suited to the caste and social standing of the 
prospective passenger — the aristocracy and the nabobs in 
luxurious seclusion, the middle class in less sumptuous 
separation, while the great unwashed undercurrent is set 
adrift in saliva spattered corrals. 

We did not come under the head of either the upper crust or 
undercurrent, it seems, and so we passed, by the grace of a 
plumed and striped-legged guard, under a portal placarded 
' ' secondo classe. ' ' 

Think of a passenger train without a conductor, if you can, 
and you will have the Italian variety. Think of a ticket that 
is never punched, and of a passenger's hat that is never deco- 
rated with a conductor's identification slip, and you will have 
the Italian way. 

The gatekeeper — I have him to this day in memory's cage 
of curiosities — a rather vicious homo with eyes of tar shot 
with electricity, and moustache corded into threatening stilettos 
— this gentleman inspected our tickets and waved us through 
the oi>ening to the platform. The tickets to us were nothing 
more tlum interesting aggregations of vowels, with a few 
consonants patrolling the pastel)oard to prevent unseemly inti- 
macy between them. An Italian hates a consonant with all 
the al)omination that a German hates a vowel. 



180 Six and One Abroad 



Our tickets called for "Roma." It is strange, with the 
veneer of civilization the denizens of Europe's big Mediter- 
ranean boot have, they cannot correctly spell the names of 
their own cities. Naples appears in all their literature as 
Napoli. There is no Florence — the predominating consonants 
in that word bar it from their lexicography — it is Firenzi. 
Venice has vowels enough but it is too unmusical and they 
call it Venezia. Milan has the fatal fault of concluding with 
an enemy to their vocabulary, and they add an "o" to bring 
it into good repute. Pisa and Genoa have the proper liquid 
lisp, and these names are spelled according to Webster's ap- 
pendix. And so it was to "Roma" we were going, instead of 
to Rome, as we had innocently supposed. 

The smoking cars of the train we were about to take were 
decorated with the word ' ' fumatori ; ' ' those in which the fumes 
were not allowed flew the phrase "E vietato fumare." The 
whole train from engine without cow-catcher and bell, to the 
"wagon lits" (sleep wagon) in the rear, was a curious affair. 
The cars were not cars at all but carriages — low enough for 
our lanky preachers to chin, and necessitating a ducking of 
the head. Most of them were divided into three compartments 
(the cars, not the preachers), each with seats at the ends, fore 
and aft, comfortably upholstered in plush (the seats, not the 
preachers), the backs overspread with indestructible lace. 
These are not movable or reversible chairs, neither indeed can 
they be in such close quarters. The compartments accommo- 
date eight passengers, provided none of the passengers is un- 
usually obese, and half of them must ride with their backs to 
the engine. The penult of this train was a long car carrying 
on its sides the French words, "wagon restaurant," which, 
translated into United States, means dining car. 

This peculiar railroad rolling stock was lined up for 100 
yards along a tufa platform, and the open doors of every 
compartment swung out upon the platform, presenting the ap- 
pearance of a procession of cabs. The classification of each 
compartment was denoted by the Roman letters: "I," "II" 
and "III," on the outside. 

On a journey of a hundred miles or more the carriage is 



248 Kilometers to Rome 181 

reversed half a dozen times, so that the passenger who first 
gets his seat fronting toward the engine and starts off with 
the presnniption that he is fortunate in position, finds that 
ere his tour is terminated he is drawn backward as much as 
forward. 

It is half past 13 o'clock. The hour of our departure has 
come. The big station clock refuses to break its timecard into 
shifts of twelve hours each, as all civilized timepieces do, but 
runs through to 24 o'clock, w'hich is midnight. It is there- 
fore 1 :30 in the afternoon by American time, and 13 :30 by 
Italian clocks and time tables, when some one blows a keen, 
intermittent whistle, and preparations hurry to a conclusion. 
Up and down the long train excited guards rush with im- 
petuous zeal slamming and locking the doors, and we are pris- 
oners of travel, in cells, without communicating doors, with- 
out raucous-voiced brakeman or porters to declare the sta- 
tions, without even a meek and lowly "txitch" to cry out in 
nasal monotone his glass pistols and blood-and-thunder litera- 
ture. 

We are off for Rome. The distance is 248 kilometers, or 165 
miles, and the route is weatherboarded, ceiled and shingled 
with scenery that baffles the best efforts of pen and tongue ta 
describe, though not the best that Italy has in stock by several 
degrees. Crawling first with hesitating caution through the 
crowded slums, and then with better speed by the places where 
macaroni, vermicelli and noodles release their odors, we are 
soon going at full clip toward Vesuvius. We wonder whether 
we are to pass by Pompeii, and are to see again the skeleton 
of the city upon which the mountain fell with consuming fury, 
when the engine suddenly turns to the left and flaunts its 
carbon pennant in the face of the desperado of the Apennines, 
as a child in its curls and knickerbockers teases a giant and 
runs away. 

Gardens, green on the gray sputum of Vesuvius, and fed by 
fragrant mountain rills ; vineyards where the young vines are 
making their first trip over the wires, roads as plump and 
white as the powdered face of a maiden, old-fashioned mills 
and patches of wheat and orchards of olive, and white-rocked 



182 Six and One Abroad 

homes — the shelter of indolent labor ; towns where traffic plods 
along narrow streets and beauty revels in the lap of prodigal 
nature; desultory clumps of pine with every tree trimmed 
of its branches to its tufted top; such is the kaleidoscope that 
turns before the windows of the train as it whirls through the 
curving volcanic valleys, the clattering wheels furnishing the 
only emphatic note of thrift to the drowsy music of rustic life 
and landscape scene. 

This plain, this wide sweep of valley, replete with Dago 
drudges and red-hooded women, crowded with baby planta- 
tions that are tilled with rudimentary tools, redolent with the 
perfume of blossoms adrift on sluggish currents of air, all its 
wealth incubating under a sun whose heat is strained to moder- 
ation through a violet veil, is the most fertile spot in Italy, and 
one of the most favored in season and climate in all the world. 
It is Campania, famous in history and story. Through it ran 
the Appian Way, the great trans-national thoroughfare of the 
Caesars, and in its enclosure of protecting mountain chains, 
the town of Capua, Cumae, Linturnum, Salernum and others 
of less note flourished. Under its mild sun and among its rich 
granaries Hannibal wintered his African troops while the 
Roman army waited in dread his movements of the spring. 

But it is not of the history of Campania I wish to speak, 
rich as it is in historic story, but of its vineyards which are to- 
day its crowning glory. Over the whole outspread expanse 
of palpitating plain, from the low hills, whose undulations 
have traveled every year for 2,000 years and are yet as fertile 
as the waxy floor of Kansas to the circling valleys where the 
rich loot of the mountains is hidden by the snows, everywhere 
within the scope of vision there is one unending, unvarying 
stretch of vines. If there are olive groves or truck patches they 
are tolerated only because they do not interfere with the do- 
minion of the grape. 

And how queer these vineyards are, each with its avenue of 
trees, and every tree alike in kind and size and form. These 
trees of the vineyards are the most striking feature of rural 
Italy. They serve a dual purpose — that of fuel and of supports 
for the vines upon which the shoots are trained. In the winter. 



248 Kilometers to Rome 183 

when the sap has subsided, the year's growth of sprouts is 
pruned off, like wool from a sheep, and this is the fuel that 
is to last the family until the harvest comes again. Get an 
idea from this of the abject necessity to which modern Italy 
is driven for fuel ; not a tree in all the great peninsula ex- 
cept these, or such as these as are planted by the hand of need, 
or occasional shrubs that fringe the gorges in the inaccessible 
ravines high up against the clouds of the mountains. Now 
picture if you can, the whole of southern Italy, on every plain 
and wherever on mountain side the soil is caugh-t up against 
abutment of rock or can be held by artificial terraces, cov- 
ered by vineyards ; and add these quaint stumps of trees that 
yield their annual shearing of sprouts, and you have the mod- 
ern kingdom in the struggle of its peasantry for a livelihood. 

And now the engine begins to labor as it rises by curving 
graduations along the water courses, until it reaches the cool 
air right off the mountain snow. As we follow its lead and turn 
to the right and to the left, and at times double back at higher 
altitudes over the way we have come, the horseshoe sweep of 
the Campania in its lazy fatness and beauty grows purple in 
the distance, and Ave finally dismiss it for the newer view 
of streams, for gray rock-walled chasms and peaks that are 
bare, imposing and tremendous fellows. Higher and higher 
yet we creep and crawl until in the solitude of this assemblage 
of giants we cannot conceive of the possibility of human habi- 
tations, and then suddenly burst upon a hiatus in their ranks, 
and before our surprised eyes a valley hangs with precarious 
tenure from the diverging ranges of rocks, and every inch of 
its fertile surface is covered with the ubiquitous vineyard. 

Dilapidated castles crown occasional peaks, relics of the era 
of unrestrained outlawry, or those of those older days of Etrus- 
can supremacy or of Roman rule — we wot not which. Suffi- 
cient it is that they tell in picturesque isolation and decay of 
strenuous days that were long, long ago superseded. It is up 
here at a town, midway Tietween the snows and the first val- 
leys, where the air is crisp and inspiriting, that we stop for a 
change of engines. The doors of the carriages are thrown open 
and the passengers pour out upon the platform. 



184 Six and One Abroad 

On a siding at the station is a large wine tank, a duplicate 
in all respects of the oil tank cars of this country, and I know 
it is an innovation of western Europe and America, for not 
often does an Italian ever conceive a notion outside of a fiddle,. 
a piece of macaroni, a cathedral or some new design in stealthy 
devilment. 

A stream rolls in a pellucid flood by our feet and hurries, 
with noisy glee through the town to a frolic on foot somewhere 
in the chasms of the mountains. 

"All aboard for Rome," again calls out the hilarious minor- 
ity. He has anticipated the whistle, which follows his an- 
nouncement, and we scamper to our cells, the guards hastily 
lock the doors, and without a toot from the engine or a pre- 
lude from a bell, we are off. Robbed, we are, of half the joys 
of travel by the absence of an engine bell and by the silent for- 
mality in getting in motion. Even the whistle of the engine 
when stops are made is so shrill that with the rocking of the 
cars we almost imagine we are a-whirl on a merry-go-round,, 
superinduced by a screaming toy engine. 

It is almost 16 o'clock, and our journey is half completed^ 
We are due at Rome at a quarter past 18. The Apennines 
show no disposition to retire in our favor, and we leave them 
at every opening, finally dashing into a valley that will lead 
us after awhile, by meandering sweeps, close to the Eternal 
City. Men and women are spading up their vineyards — 
the women always wearing deep blue skirts and bright 
head kerchiefs. Once only we see the sod turning before the 
plow, but the plow is after the similitude of those of Spain and 
the Holy Land — a single-handed concern, and the power is an 
Egyptian buffalo, those blue, hairless beasts with horns flat- 
tened back on their necks. Occasionally patches of wheat or 
clover break the monotonous regime of vineyards, and the 
vineyards themselves differ from their trans- Apennine fellows, 
in that the trees, alike in all other particulars, hold on their 
knotty round tops betwixt two supporting sprouts, their last. 
year's yield of fuel. 

The clouds have been gathering for some time ; now they have- 
burst and are drenching the valley. Through the mist upon. 



248 Kilometers to Borne 185 



the glass doors we can catch indistinct glimpses of mountains 
rushing by, and now and then descry a peasant squatting un- 
der a blue umbrella. No Italian of any class, caste or condi- 
tion ever carries a black umbrella. There is something about 
all the Southern races that makes them admire gay colors; and 
so these brunettes of mountains and sea carry colored sun 
shades, wearing barber pole hose, crimson bandanas, scarlet 
skirts or shirts — and the peasant in the field, the aristocrat in 
the villa, the soldier in feathers and stripes, all are arrayed 
in the brilliant plumage of the rainbow. It is the harmony of 
sentient nature with the vivid hues of landscape and sky. 

A walled town appears on the summit of a low hill and its 
aspect is so ancient and its pretentions so great that we wonder 
if we have reached imperial Rome. Scores of caves are gaping 
in the caves of the hills with evidence of habitation ; and as we 
progress beyond the city without a stop, these underground 
homes (of hermits and religious recluses, we surmise) continue 
in evidence, until we bid farewell to the dreary view of moun- 
tain fastnesses and caves and gray decaying city, and pass 
through the inferno of a tunnel, out upon a great expanse of 
plain, which is a treeless waste in appearance like a western 
prairie, slightly ruffled with undulations. Here, there, yon- 
der, solemn ruins are keeping vigil over a desolation that none 
have dared to occupy since the Roman legions drilled upon 
its unobstructed floor, or Roman magnates nursed their gout 
and dyspepsia in the days of Roman opulence. Majestically 
tramping the line of the horizon, like a procession of mastadons, 
a gigantic aqueduct, the greatest of all such Roman enterprises 
to be seen throughout Europe and western Asia, makes its way 
over the topographic swells, from somewhere in the mountains 
where the water is pure and plentiful, to the city of Rome — - 
along this main 2000 years ago ran the floods that supplied 4,- 
000,000 souls. 

We are traversing the Roman Campagna. As beautiful as 
an Arizona llano, and as useless now under the volcanic cover 
repose the secrets of battles lost and won, and in its chemistry 
the bones of countless soldiers and citizens have been resolved 
into their original elements. 



186 Six and One Abroad 



Straight ahead, against the sky's wainscoting of crimson and 
gold, the sharp outlines of steeples and pinnacles are cut, and 
towering above them all a dome, immense and imperious even 
at a distance of twenty miles, dominates the whole visible land- 
scape, even as its prisoner occupant dominates the religious 
thought and scruples of half the world. 

Leaning out of the carriage window, I try to catch and diag- 
nose every ruin and at the same time keep an anxious eye upon 
the city ahead, growing fast in the widening perspective. Im- 
agination starts a reel of moving mental pictures, but the whole 
inspiring reverie is suddenly upset by a modern race course, 
with its pennants, grandstand and jockeys in loud uniforms 
astride bob-tailed horses in a steeple chase. 

Under a span of the Claudian aqueduct we dodge, and 
through coal yards and railroad machine shops slowly make our 
way to the old walls beyond which the best of the old city 
and all the new is hidden. And then, through an opening, 
battered by the rams of modern enterprise, we enter, and in the 
shed of a splendid station, become the guests of Rome. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

St. Peter's mid the Vatican. 

Our first day in Kome was ushered in by a terrific clanging 
and clamor of bells, the like of which we had not heard before, 
not even in Jerusalem. It was a noisy fanfare of steeple choirs, 
not the resonant, robust notes of American bells, but the nasal 
jangle of thin-throated chimes. 

At five o'clock, an hour when the traveller, weary from 
the strenuous routine of the previous day, and a laborious ap- 
pendix of half the night, is getting his sweetest and most re- 
freshing sleep, this tempest of the sonorous muezzins of re- 
ligious Rome is exasperating in the extreme. All the way from 
the ponderous gongs of the cathedrals to the tintinnabulations 
of suburban chapels the reverberations rise and fall in swells 
and wa^es and surging billows, encircling the city in a pound- 
ing belt of sound. The first tempest of calls to matin service 
lasts about five minutes, and then a recess ensues. The sleeper's 
nerves are quieted and he hopes for a supplementary snatch 
of repose, when the bedlam breaks loose again and his temper 
is upset and in the extremity of his vexation he dresses and goes 
down to the sitting room, there to find a lot of red-eyed, yawn- 
ing and mayhap grouchy fellows who have been similarly 
roused from their slumbers and are seeking surcease from 
their troubles in American and English papers and magazines. 

After breakfast— no, that's a misnomer, for no breakfasts 
are served in the hotels of Europe — after disposing of the sev- 
eral transverse sections of a column of baker's bread, capital, 
entablature and all, we fell in Avitli the usual custom of en- 
gaging carriages and a guide. And while the preachers went 
into consultation with the guide to arrange preliminaries and 
plan the itinerary, I took advantage of the delay to find the 
bank where I was to have my first news from home since Cairo. 
Ah, how pre-eminent above famed ruins and curious scenes, 
pictured Madonnas and paintings, the memory of a little woman 
and two bovs in a far awav home looms in the mind on such 



188 Six and One Abroad 



trips as these. AVait, you clamoring guides ! Avaunt you pesti- 
ferous cabmen ! These lines snatched from envelopes bearing 
the postal likeness of our own Washington, and stamped all 
over with the cold formality of foreign offices through which 
they haA^e come, are worth all the ancient chiselings of all the 
ruins of Rome. 

The programme of the drive as adopted by the preachers 
was one of several itineraries the guide had about his person. 
It was a printed sheet and is reproduced here ad literatim, ad 
punctuatum : 

Drive Programme 
29nd Avril 
Carriage Avill call for Hotel 
9 a m start for 9,15 sharp 
Visit the Pincian Gardens from whom the seven 
hills in Rome will explain (Be?t Bir-wue 
of city-town) Thence drive over 
Vatican ( museum — Sculpture — 
sistine Chapel — Loges Ra- 
fael — Pinacatoque) 
Procedure to the Hotel and Lunch 



Starting once IMore 2,30 Sharp 

Visit church St. Peter Pantheon Roman Phorum 

Colosseum Returning back for 

Hotel Around 6pm 

From the Pincian Gardens — beautiful place on a charming 
hill — we had a really fine "bir-wue of city town." Below, lay 
the modern city looking very much in panorama like any other 
modern city, some of its peculiar features being : Isolated gray 
splotches of ruins — old solitary columns and spectral ruinis 
widely scattered, zealously guarded from the threatening en- 
croachments of commercialism — cathedrals whose keen and 
ornate spires resembled in a measure the masts of a multitude 
of ships at anchor; St. Peter's, majestic under a superabundance 
of dome ; the Tiber, sinuous and murky, mirroring the hundreds 
of buildings that lined its historic banks; right at our feet be- 



St. Peter's and the Vatican 189 



iieatli the bluff en whose deL-orated top we stood, the j-Jte of 
the ancient Circus Maximus, restored and having in its center 
an Egyptian obelisk — one of seventeen in different parts of 
Konie, this one holding hieroglyphics that recorded the name 
and deeds of Rameses II, the foster-father of Moses, of date 1330 
B. C. ; guarding this monument are four lions, through whose 
open mouths issue perpetual streams of water from the melted 
snows of the mountains ; to the left, hard by, the unpretentious 
hou5e that was the home of Shelley, an English poet of some 
note, and, adjoining Nero's grave, and near it a chapel where 
jNIartin Luther dwelt during his visit of 1512. 

All the original seven hills had such meretricious and thick- 
set adojnment that we were forced to close our eyes in order 
to rehabilitate them with the old first structures and to restore 
the scenes of the old times. The Tiber, too, venerable rem- 
nant, the only one left with all or any of the former status of 
thijigs, while preserving in tte main its ancient curves and 
turbid aspect, had nevertheless changed its course so as not 
to carry through the ages the opprobium of the Tarpeian rock 
yonder whose blood-stained front it used to lap. 

All around were the weather-grimed statues of heroes and 
gods that were the work of the world's best chisels. 

A drive in Rome, a mere drive with interlocutory stops, is un- 
satisfactory, but we were committed to the guide's pro- 
gramme, and at that unctions dignitary's own time having 
parted with the Pincian Gardens and with a fin-de-siecle couple 
who had ten.porarily annexed themselves to ns there for guide- 
lore privileges, we unraveled a skein of Roman streets to where 
they became untangled at a bridge over the Tiber, and followed 
its straightened course thence by Hadrian's imposing tomb — 
marl)le-lined and '■umptucus once, now the dismal prison of 
army derelicts — till we brought up presently and without inci- 
dent at St. Peter's; and there the guide's printed programme 
received a smash by unanimous consent and we never tried to 
follow it again. 

The fir.st impression of St. Peter's was disappointing. The 
stone of its front was so discolored bv smudges of weather rust 



190 



Six and One Abroad 




St. Peter's and the Vatican 191 



that we wondered why the world ever got its consent to go 
into raptures over it. 

The exterior was massive enough and impressive too, but was 
utterly crude and unsightly. The Vatican building ad.join- 
ing it on the right, but for the figures of saints on its front, 
might well be mistaken for a modern American factory, so de- 
void of finish, so numerous its windows and so square and 
small its panes of glass. 

A spacious court in elliptical form and circumscribed by 
colonnades of clustered columns, each cluster surmounted by 
a statue of a saint, introduces St. Peter's. Exactly in the center 
of the court stands another of the seventeen Egyptian obelisks 
of Rome, this one having been procured by Caligula. A couple 
of fountains, one on each side of the court, discharge veritable 
cataracts of water over graduated basin rims, the falling floods 
contributing happily to the combination of effects. 

Interest is added by the recollection that it was at this par- 
ticular place that Nero established his wonderful garden and 
circus. It is also related in Catholic records that Peter was 
crucified between the "winning posts of Nero's circus" and 
that he was buried where he died, "close to Nero'.s palace." 
Around and over his grave the church of St. Peter was built. 

The pavement slopes upward toward the entrance to the 
church until it breaks into a flight of steps of such proportions 
that we thought one of the ancient amphi-theaters must have 
been cut in two with a steam cheese knife and straightened and 
spread before the doors. 

The interior, sufficiently magnificent on its own hook, be- 
comes more so to the eyes that have been misled by the facade 
and approaches. How sublime the symmetry of dimensions ! 
How vast the proportions ; how majestic the great sweep of 
600 feet of nave and of transept scarcely smaller! How ex- 
quisite the decorations, the gildings, the chiseled lacework, es- 
pecially of the canopy of the dome uprising in grace 440 feet 
above the tesselated floor ! 

Eighty thousand people can attend a service in this church. 
There are no seats, of course, but an almost boundless expanse 
of standing room. The marble floor, a composite of individual 



192 Six and One Abroad 

stones the size of an art square, starts off from the entrance 
where we stood, 200 feet wide, and as it recedes, the aisles on 
the sides seem to press the great columns toward the center, 
until the marble squares are reduced to diminutive units in 
the chequered perspective. 

The ceiling is a drapery of gold leaf, tucked and pinned into 
graceful folds, every particle of the costly fabric being ham- 
mered into mosaic or drawn hj tedious patience into designs 
of incomparable filigree. The walls are alive with pictures of 
Virgins and sainted characters of the wonderful history of the 
Catholic church that seems to be perfect in execution. And 
yet, never a painter's brush was used in the creation of these 
particular pictures, nor the slightest pinch of pigment from a 
painter's palette. They are mosaics, bits of colored stones as- 
sembled with infinite patience and blended into all the shades 
and tints and outlines of a picture that is as faultless as the 
art of the genius that built them. 

The rotunda is 613 feet in circumference. Supporting the 
dome are four elaborately chiseled marble piers, fluted, frescoed 
and adorned with busts of notables, each pier 234 feet around 
and 200 feet to the capitals that blossom underneath the heavy 
curvatures of the dome. High up there, so immense are all the 
proportions and ratios that they seem but half the real distance, 
couched in deep cut niches in the piers, are four figures in 
marble relief. I should have said they were hardly life-size, but 
the records have it that they are sixteen feet in stature. These 
statues are likenesses respectively of Longinus, reputed to be 
the Roman soldier who thrust his spear into Jesus' side on the 
cross, afterward repenting and becoming His follower; Queen 
Helena, mother of Constantine, who went to Jerusalem in her 
day and located the holy historic places, found the three crosses, 
the manger, etc. ; Veronica, who is reputed to have caught the 
impression of Jesus' face on her handkerchief; and Andrew, 
the disciple. Around the base of the dome in mosaic are the 
words in Latin: ''Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will 
build my church, and I will give unto thee the keys of the 
kingdom of heaven." 

A bronze figure of Peter in bare feet stands upon a pedestal 



St. Peter's and the Vatican 193 



against one of the huge pillars in the nave. Occasionally a de- 
vout person in passing drops a fervent kiss npon the extended 
foot, which is at a convenient height for snch caresses ; the more 
fastidious, however, place a hand npon the toe and kiss the 
hand instead. The foot has been worn smooth by these devo- 
tions, and the outline of the toe is scarcely discernible. 

The treasures of the Vatican are too numerous to be included 
in a running sketch such as this. In its great library of 150,000 
priceless manuscripts but few are exposed to the eye of the 
visitor, each having a secure niche under lock somewhere in the 
labyrinth of galleries. In these catacombs of literature a nar- 
row hall, almost 200 yards long and dark and winding like a 
secret subterranean approach to some mysterious cave, leads 
between continuous rows of cabinets, in whose closed drawers, 
labeled in Latin, the literary treasure-trove of antiquity lies. 
Outrunning the echoes that dogged our heels in this weird 
and melanchol}^ duct, we debouched into the ante-chamber of 
a great room where the sun flashed his brightest light in our 
faces. In this room, white with the light of day, the w^alls 
fairly screaming with loud and painfully gorgeous pictures, the 
ceiling a riot of fluttering angels and saints — a savage extrav- 
aganza of color — are kept and carefully guarded the premier 
treasures of the world's oldest manuscripts. The Codex Vati- 
canus, the earliest copy of the Scriptures extant, has a cabinet 
all to itself; and beg as much as we would, we could not ob- 
tain a glance at the precious relic; not because the keeper m 
charge was unaccommodating, but because every exposure 
hastens its obliteration and we were not such distinguished 
guests as to call for the keys. 

In lieu of the coveted sight of the Codex, we were shown a 
law brief of Cicero in his own hand, a bit of the Aeneid in 
Virgil's own personal writing, and the love letters of Henry 
VIII to Anne Boleyn, interlined and corrected, every erasure 
prized as we would prize the scrawl of a child that is dead. A 
hundred glass-topped stands occupied the expansive floor, each 
with its thiek lid. removable for momentary glances at the treas- 
ures inside, so very like an undertaker's morgue, where the 
victims of a disaster have been collected. In its very middle 



194 Six and One Abroad 

a baptismal bowl of the richest, deepest green malachite, a gift 
from the emperor of Kussia, is so conspicuous that it never 
fails to halt the visitor and elicit his admiration. 

But if the Vatican library and it? museum attract their 
thousands, the picture galleries draw their tens of thousands. 
Michelangelo's Last Judgment, Raphael's Transfiguration, and 
several thousand other noted pictures are here. I have only 
this to say about them : AVhy, oh why, did these princes of 
the brush never hear a call for their talents from the delectable 
landseapes of Italy? If I had all the "master" paintings of 
the Vatican and was unable to turn them into cash, I think I 
would trade them off for chromos of pleasing views — a hundred 
Madonnas for a single splashing waterfall ; a hundred and fifty 
saints for a single mountain scene with a passenger train par- 
alleling a stream and a buzzard afloat in the azure overhead. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

The Tragedij of the Catacomhs. 

There is an air of dolefiilness about everything in Rome 
Avhich hang-j like a pall of some past or impending calamity 
over it. So dense, so all-prevailing is this atmosphere of mel- 
ancholy that it has a depressing effect upon the visitor. To 
laugh in such surroundings is as irreverent as it is impossible, 
humor is as reproachful as a joke at a funeral, and, to add to 
the dismal situation, when we were on the scene the skies wore 
their heaviest robes of grief and poured out their lamentations 
intermittently in floods for six dreary days. It may have been 
that the clouds and the precipitation were chiefly responsible 
for the condition, though the ruins and the cathedrals and their 
historic suggestiveness were factors. Of one thing I made up 
my mind after the first day and that was that I would never 
again look upon the sorrowful painting of an old master nor 
go inside a lachrimose cathedral, a resolution I adhered to man- 
fully for a day and a half. Life is too short to be haunted 
to the end with memories of Angelo's horrors or to have its 
pleasures eclipsed by recurring recollections of weird cathedral 
services and painful cathedral gloom. 

I heard but one hearty laugh from native or visitor, saint 
or sinner, old or young, fat, lean or medium, during the en- 
tire period of our sojourn in Rome, and that joyful out-break, 
though at my own expense, was a welcome rift in the gloom, 
a red flag shaken at the bull of melancholy. This bit of com- 
edy was so rare that it seemed like a flower entangled in the 
weeds of grief and I plucked it and pressed it, and now give it 
to the reader. 

I was standing in the door of my room, with a map of Rome 
in my hand, a. kodak over my shoulder, waiting for the preach- 
ers, to go on a tour of great expectations through the catacombs, 
when a chambermaid appeared with a bundle of laundry. Now, 
this maid was of French extraction and Italian residence, and 
was, of course, on speaking terms with both those languages, 



196 Six and One Abroad 

but she was as much a stranger to English as she is spoke as 
was French as she is butchered to me and mine. Incidentally, 
the maid had a navy blue birth mark all over her face. Of 
course this was a misfortune that was a source of chagrin to 
the poor girl, but it cut such a prominent figure in this story 
that I cannot afford, even out of consideration for her, to 
omit it. 

"How much?" I inquired in the only language I knew, de- 
siring to know the cost of the laundry. The reply was a shake 
of the head and an embarrassed smile that flickered around the 
edge of the birth mark like a phosphorous ruffle on a quilt 
scrap. 

^ ' How much this laundry ? " I repeated at the top of my voice, 
hoping to crack the densitj^ of her understanding with the con- 
cussion, but the maid was still speechless and the embroidered 
smile was unabated. 

In desperation I abandoned speech and resorted to the rudi- 
mentary pantomime of the paleozoic age. No results. I took 
an Italian coin from my pocket to illustrate the subject; ah, 
that was the open sesame to her comprehension, and out of a 
crevasse that opened in the midst of eddying smiles came a 
volley of French that rattled on the armor plate of my in- 
comprehensibility. I had started something anyway and that 
was encouraging. 

The lady pointed to a bit of a slip gathered in the cord with 
which the bundle was bound, which I had not seen, and I 
pounced upon it as the probable solution of a predicament. 
Eureka! It was the coveted bill. But the total — ^surely there 
must have been some mistake — $6.10 for only a dozen garments 
— had I been mistaken for a nabob of unlimited wealth and 
unlimited unconcern as to the disposition of it? It was rob- 
bery in approved banditti style — I would not submit to it. I 
glanced again at the little buff strip in the hope that I might 
find the first reading erroneous ; but there it was in plain hand 
that any American could read — 6.10. I then took the trouble 
to glance at the itemized list to determine by what process of 
mathematics and outrageous charges the laundry robbers arrived 
at such preposterous results. 



The Tragedy of the Catacomhs 197 

Mirabile dictu ! It was the laundry of a woman, the lingerie 
of some wealthy dame or damsel — wealthy because the Alpine 
figures charged against each piece of apparel would indicate 
a lot of delicate and intricate lace and ruffling that had taxed 
the care and ingenuity of the washery. I do not mind telling 
the reader, as I am now far away from the jurisdiction of this 
offense, that I abstracted the price list of this bit of laundry, 
and now, with infinite blushes 1 present it for perusal ; in 
words, tenor and effect as follows : 

Linge cV Hommes. 

7 mouchoirs 70 

4 chemises, simples 2.00 

4 chemises, de nuit 1.60 

2 paires de chausettes qua has 40 

2 camisoles en flannelle 1.00 

4 faux cols 40 

Total 6.10 

How grateful I was that in a moment of exasperation and 
confusion I had not broken the wrapper and plunged into 
the secrets of this feminine package. Here, maid, take this 
bundle, handle it tenderly, and deliver it to its rightful owner 
with my respects. 

But the maid hesitated, and I tried by every sign known 
to calisthenics to communicate to her my discovery that the 
bundle was not mine. I pointed to the list, which was prima 
facie and positive ; I pointed to her as representative of her 
sex, but she would not believe. She only laughed, a scornful, 
skeptical laugh, and pointed toward the bundle as if mischiev- 
ously daring me to open it. This I emphatically declined to 
do upon any provocation or pretext. Whereupon the maid, 
maintaining all the while a provoking placid demeanor in the 
midst of my own perturbation, opened the package — and there 
in shining starch lay the familiar friends of ray own meager 
wardrobe. The mistake was mine. The suspiciously listed 
items were only the French for shirts. Of course, however, 
the prices charged were either a mistake or robbery, and I 



198 Six and One Abroad 

went down by way of the ''lift" to interview the 'Sportier," 
the autocrat who presides over the destinies of the hotel. The 
mistake again was mine. The figures were Italian liras and 
centimes, a lira being equivalent to 20 cents in our money and 
a centime to 1-5 of a cent. My bill was therefore only $1.22. 

This episode was a pleasing prelude to a day which was to 
be replete with the antithesis of comedy- — the tragedy of a trip 
through the Catacombs. 

Musing somewhat upon what we had seen and were des- 
tined to see, and amused somewhat over the comedy of the 
maid and the laundry package, for the preachers had seen most 
of it and heard it all, we followed the pompous lead of the guide 
in a roundabout course, to inspect intervening places of in- 
terest. Rattling along the damp g-ashes which the modem 
Romans call streets, we came after many a turn and dip to- 
the Ghetto, the Jewish quarter of the city, where that exclu- 
sive race has had its reservation since the time when Titus, 
drew the first great throng? of Jews along the Appian Way 
as trophies of his triumph, following the siege of Jerusalem. 
Only a scant four or five years had elapsed since Paul had 
"finished his fight" and received his "crown of rejoicing;"' 
Peter's body, if tradition be true, was hardly yet cold in tlie 
damp of death, when Titus brought to the great world city 
the ancestors of these people. I am sorry to have to record,, 
incidentally, t^ie fact that their coming renewed in Rome 
those doctrinal differences which had brought about the cruci- 
fixion of Christ, and there is some basis for the claim that the 
contentions between the old line Jews and the Christians on 
the Messiahship of Christ contributed in no- small degree to 
their stigma in the eyes of Rome and to the cruel orgies of the 
Colosseum. 

Within a few minutes after emerging from the crazy gulches of 
the Ghetto we stood at the place on the bank of the Tiber where 
the bridge that Horatius defended started in its course across 
the river. The guide, who had been christened Cicero by our 
party because of his eloquent speech at the Forum, knew all 
the details of the bridge incident, and we were utterly amazed 
at the wonderful story as he related it. He was our very own 



The Tragedy of the Catacombs 



199 



and we swalldwed implicitly every impossible feature of his 
story though it smashed McGuffey, "Dick's Easy Orations for 
Beginners," and contradicted Livy, Tacitus and Gibbons' 
"Decline and Fall." 

AVe drove along the left bank of the brown old Tiber, taking 
absent-minded notice of the boats that were loading for a trip 
to the IMediterranean eighteen miles down the muddy current, 
by a street car track that ran in kinks and curves upon a 
pavement of sun and shade mosaic, until we came upon a pyra- 
mid in a corner of the city wall. A pyramid in Rome ! And 
Avhy not? She was a cosmopolitan city. There was a temple 




A BERTH IN THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



to Isis and Osiris in Pompeii ; and there are now seventeen 
towering obelisks that were stolen from sleeping Egypt in the 
days when Christianity was yet in the womb of prophecy. 
Then why not a pyramid? This architectural freak is one- 
twentieth the size of Cheops, the largest of the Egyptian pyra- 
mids, is made of concrete faced with brick and was once cov- 
ered with slabs of marble. The Latin inscriptions on its sides 
indicate that it was erected to one Caius Cestius, who de- 
parted this life twelve years before the birth of Christ, and 
that 230 days were required to complete the work of construc- 
tion. History takes passing note of this man Cestius and in- 
forms us that he was a glutton of the most lordly and exag- 
gerated type. It is stated in a little milder form, however, 
the word "epicurean" being substituted for glutton. It is 
alleged that he had his table filled with the most delicious 



200 Six and One Abroad 

dishes that the empire of Rome could furnish and that the 
most expert caterers could prepare. It is further alleged that 
he ate a hearty meal seven times in the twenty-four hours, 
and when his appetite lagged under the load it carried he would 
stimulate this conscience of the stomach with a feather to 
induce desire and morbid pleasure in further feasting. There 
was no inscription on the monument telling of what the fellow 
died, but I am willing to risk my reputation for correct con- 
jectures that it was of a disease that had its locus somewhere 
below the belt and above the bottom of his pockets. 

An English cemetery adjacent to this mausoleum contains 
the humble tombs of Keats and Shelley, the former bearing the 
pathetic epitaph suggested by himself : "Here lies one whose name 
is writ in water." Shelly 's resting place is marked by a simple 
slab that was laid in the presence of the poet Byron. His re- 
mains are not there, only his heart which was his best part, 
his body having been cremated according to his request. 

Five minutes beyond the cemetery stands the church of "St. 
Paul's Beyond the Walls," the only feature of the interim 
of space being the diversion afforded by a bunch of Italian 
urchins who turned handsprings in the road and ran along 
by our side with extended hands for the quid pro quo. It was 
absolutely imperative, so the preachers said, that we visit this 
church, but if it had not later developed that the place was really 
very interesting I would have been confirmed in my first opin- 
ion that the divines had deliberately enticed me thither with 
a view to forcing a fracture of the resolution I had made two 
days before, never to enter another cathedral. 

The annals of the Catholic church have it that Paul was 
beheaded during the last year of Nero's: reign, in the year 68, 
and that his body was buried in a small cemetery belonging 
to a Roman matron by the name of Lucina ; that the simple 
chapel erected over his grave at the time remained intact until 
the reign of Constantine, when it was enlarged and embel- 
lished; that this chapel endured until the year 1813, when it 
was destroyed and soon thereafter the present structure was 
begun on a great scale. 

It is well to remark here that all great Catholic cathedrals. 



The Tragedy of the Catacombs 201 



and Epi-eopal ones, too, for that matter, are crncifonn in de- 
sign, that is, the interior open space is disposed in the form 
of a cross. The main floor, representing the upright beam of 
the cross, is called the nave ; the transverse section represent- 
ing the cross-beam is called the transept. Parallel with the 
nave and separated from it usually by rows of columns are 
open spaces that go by the technical term of aisles. The most 
sacred spot in a cruciform church is the head of the nave, be- 
cause it was at the top of the cross that the head of Jesus lay. 
The sacred altar, where prayers are said and the incense is 
swung, is at the head of the nave. If there should be any 
extraordinary cause for the erection of the church at the par- 
ticular spot it occupies, that feature has preferred position at 
the point where the nave and transept cross. At "St. Paul's 
Beyond the Walls" the tomb of the Apostle has this special 
distinction. And not only the remains of Paul, but all that 
was mortal of Timothy, his favorite pupil in the ministry, lie 
here; side and side, the great pioneer of Christianity and his 
trusting disciple. Thus saith the records of Catholicism. A 
most attractive, and indeed a gorgeous pavilion, of richest 
bronze and elaborate ornamentation, stands above the reputed 
tombs, supported by four pillars of alabaster that hail from the 
quarries of Assuan, the gift of the Khedive. 

The w^alls of this church are adorned with oil paintings rep- 
resenting biblical incidents in the career of the Apostle, and 
up against the ceiling and reaching almost around the ex- 
pansive interior are mosaic portraits of all the 260 popes, won- 
drous works that, without the touch of a brush, have material- 
ized into faultless and faithful pictures. The first on the list 
is Peter, with abundant brown whiskers. Number two is a 
likene-s of Pope Linus, who succeeded Pope Peter in the year 
67, according to Catholic lists of succession. This pope, I no- 
ticed, had unusually brilliant eyes, and wherever the visitor 
might turn, those lustrous eyes would follow him. 
"What is the trouble with Pope No. 2, Cicero?" 
"Ah, yes, look this way, gentlemen, please. Pope Linus, 
yonder, next to St. Peter, you will notice, has very bright 
eyes. They are of solid diamond and are worth many thou- 



202 Six and One Abroad 

sands of dollar;. They were presented by the present Queen 
of Portugal, who is a lineal descendant of Linus. Each of 
these medallions of the pope's cost 5,000 liras ($1,000). The 
little chapel there — come in, gentlemen — here now is the cruci- 
fix that spoke to St. Bridget. The picture of Christ on the 
arch is the oldest of Mary's Son in the world, except some that 
we shall see in the catacombs. That beautiful altar yonder, so 
green and shining, is the gift of the Czar of Russia; it is mala- 
chite." 

The ceiling is a shining drapery of gold, the floor as clean 
as if it had just been swept, and glistening like a mirror. In a 
word and without further description, the church of St. Paul's 
is in my opinion even more splendid and more beautiful, if 
it is not as colossal, than St. Peter's, and that is putting it 
strong. I shall never forget the faultless expanse of marble 
floor, nor the rapturous ceiling, nor prettier by far than all 
other structural decorations of Rome, or of Europe even, the 
forest of superb violet column? with their capitals in glowing 
white and heliotrope, veritable flowers blooming on stems of 
rarest sculpture ; the grateful absence, too, of tombstone^, ex- 
cepting only those of Paul and Timothy, and if I had the least 
suspicion those great men were really resting there, the church 
would be invested with an interest that would give it a place 
in the Westminster Abbey of memory forever. 

"About three kilometers down that row of eucalyptus trees 
(he did not say eucalyptus, but it was what he meant) is the 
place where St. Paul was martyred," observed Cicero, when 
we were once more out in the open. "Want to see it? Close 
to pine trees where anonymous Greek Acts say he was be- 
headed." 

While the preachers were hesitating, McCurdy broke in: 
' ' If pine tree there yet, we go see it ; if not, we go catacombs. 
Understand?" And we were off for the day's big feature. 
In the course of fifteen or twenty minutes we arrived at a 
rock wall where we left the carriage and entered an enclosure 
that had every symptom of an old abandoned field; to the right 
nothing but a waste, its monotony broken by occasional ruins; 
to the left the same, except in the background the city of 



Tlie Tragedy of the Catacombs 203 

solemn gray; directly in front a little house and a grove. At 
this little house Cicero engaged the services of a fat, brown- 
robed Franciscan friar to conduct us; nothing could have been 
more in harmony with the ruin?: we were to see. 

After that queer-habited gentleman had delivered to each of 
us a wax taper and had observed in French and English 
brogue : ' ' Zis ze way, zhendlemen, ' ' we followed him into his 
backyard, expecting to see some great architectural demonstra- 
tion at the opening of the underground city of the dead. But 
there was nothing in sight except a mound that looked like 
the entrance to a western Texas storm house more than any- 
thing else. Imagine our astonishment when the old friar wob- 
bled straight to that storm house and without preliminaries 
or hesitation stepped into the dark hole, -remarking as he 
stooped and led the way: "Look for your heads, zhendle- 
men." 

The steps leading down into the silent abandoned city were 
cut 1800 years ago in the solid rock. They are worn, now, and 
well they may be — badly worn — for many a sad and grievous 
mission had called the living into those dismal haunts, for a 
million souls — oh, no, no, no, not the souls, but a million bodies 
from which the ^spirits had flown, were laid there in pockets 
where the chemistry of dissolution had wrought their return 
to the dust from which they came — thousands headless from 
the executioner's axe; tens of thousands limbless and lacerated 
to their doom by enhungered animals in Rome's great slaugh- 
ter house. 

Twenty feet below the surface we struck bottom and en- 
countered there a covey of irreverent girls who had just done 
the catacombs, as they flippantly put it. Like a procession 
of haunts with staggering will-o'-the-wisps we groped along 
the passageways — halls so narrow that we could touch either 
side with either hand, and yet ceilings high enough to admit 
the tallest head. The graves, rifled of their contents, yawned 
as we passed as though they were animate things aroused from 
the stupor of ages by the intrusion of light and life. On, and 
on and on we trudged, the flickering tapers so weak that they 
made little impression on the inky clouds of gloom — a dark- 



204 Six and One Abroad 



ness so intensely black that it had smutted the streets and every 
exposed particular of this burrowed necropolis. The friar 
sang a constant mechanical nasal song of explanation that we 
might have understood had we been born in Paris. Sometimes 
we would proceed in a straight course for a couple of hundred 
yards, and then would veer to one side. There were cross 
streets and alleys by the scores; there were occasional large 
courts where we surmised religious services had once been held.' 
And always, everywhere, the walls were littered with open 
graves, all cut to measure like suits of clothes, here a long 
thin one for a person six feet tall ; there one two feet thick and 
short, the receptacle for a stout and dumpy man or a woman 
brief and obese ; yonder, between two adult slits, a miniature 
niche oval in shape that was cut by devoted hands, the curves 
of which were intended as an extra expression of love. 

Sometimes the graves were regular and systematic, at other 
times cut at random and without reference to order. Occa- 
sionally we came upon a sepulcher that was sealed, and at these 
the friar would halt his column and chant a mongrel explana- 
tion. We could not understand what he said, and so do not 
know who lie buried there. The fronts were closed with mar- 
ble, stone or tile, cemented carefully, on which were carved 
sometimes, but often painted, short epitaphs in a poor Latin 
scrawl showing that the hands that made them were not the 
hands of the elite of Rome. 

Down below this first city of tombs is a second city almost 
as large as the first, to which we descended by a flight of 
steps. There were the same seemingly unending scheme of 
empty haunted cells and dark streets where echoes sprang at 
us from the corners at every turn, and ghosts peeped over the 
billows of blackness and mocked every whisper that escaped 
our affrighted lips and every song of the friar and every shuffle 
of our feet. I managed to lag behind the procession once, 
where I saw in an open niche the bones of a Christian martyr — 
Christian at least, because on' the broken slab that once sealed 
his resting place was the scrawl of a fish and a palm. I hope 
I may be forgiven for this vandalism, for I am sure the spirit 
of the dead does not care, and if in the scheme of the judg- 



The T raged I) of the Catacombs 205 

ment it should become nece-ssary to collect the scattered re- 
mains of the dead, I shall willingly give up the bit that I have 
in order that the arms of his glorified body may be complete 
for eternity's enjoyment. 

The gjreat majority of the graves have long ago been de- 
spoiled of their remains. Following the devastation of the 
catacombs bv the Goths in the sixth and seventh centuries, 



A STREET IX THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 

Popes Paul and Paschal undertook the tremendous task of re- 
moving the bones of the Christians and depositing them in 
heaps under certain churches, or of working them up into 
ghastly decorations for chapels in order to impress upon nov- 
ices in the ascetic orders of the church the awful solemnities 
of religion. 

]\Iany of the tombs have inscriptions upon them — most of 
them, however, do not — but they are invariably simple tributes 
denoting in a single adjective the piety, the purity, the af- 



206 Six and One Abroad 

fection, and sometimes the beatity of the sleeper. All or nearly 
all of them that have epitaphs, however brief, close with the con- 
ventional "In Face'' (At Rest) ; how much more than we can 
conjecture, this simple phrase must have meant to the perse- 
cuted Christians of that day. And so, often, in addition to 
the epitaphs, and oftener where there is no epitaph at all, 
there is an emblem, the dove of purity, the palm of martyrdom, 
the anchor of faith or the fish, which represents Jesus — ^the 
Greek term for fish being ichtus, the letters of which are the 
initials of the Greek word lesus Christus Theou Uias Sorter, 
meaning Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior. Very crude indeed 
are the drawings — like children's scrawls on a kindergarten 
blackboard. 

In our meanderings we came upon a large room where in 
the flickering candle-light we could dimly discern a painting 
of no mean order. Old Testament scenes were respresented, 
such as Jonah cast up by the whale, Abraham preparing the 
sacrifice of Isaac, the Hebrew children in the fire, and differ- 
ent New Testament miracles. Further along the friar held his 
wax taper close to a sepulcher that was sealed with marble 
with extra care and neatness, and this was the inscription that 
appeared in a bold sculptured hand: ''Diogenes Fossor In 
Pace Depositus." Diogenes was right; he is indeed resting "in 
peace," while we who survive him will never cease from trouble 
till we, like he, are ''In Pace Depositus." 

The catacombs were not dug according to drafted plans. A 
family needed a place of burial and according to the custom 
of the poor of the time a tomb was carved in the rock. The 
rock was a composite of volcanic nature, neither as hard as 
lava nor as soft as soil, easily cut and yet impervious to water, 
an ideal substance for the purpose. Other families followed 
the example of the first, and still others, until in the course 
of many years, these cemeteries became contiguous and con- 
nections were made. And then it became necessary because of 
the lack of subsurface room, to dig to deeper depths and lay 
other floors and galleries, and still deeper floors and cells and 
galleries, until the catacombs of St. Calixtus, which were the 



The T raged ij of the Catacombs 207 



ones we visited, there are sev( n cities of the dead, one en top of 
the other like a mighty building- seven stories deep. 

The estimated length of the streets of all the catacombs of 
Rome is absolutely startling — the lowest estimate of the va- 
rious archaeologists who have explored them being 350 miles. 
Others vary in their estimates up to 900 miles. Only the 
Creator, who noted the death of each, has any definite idea of 
the num})er who have slept in these labyrinths of rooms, but 
no one would dare put it below the great total of three millions. 

The air was dead and heavy underground, and wherea? the 
whole length of the vast network of galleries and alleys and 
.streets was of a monotonous sameness, and 

AVhereas, We took note that our tapers were burning dan- 
gerously low, and 

Whereas, We looked forward with very great apprehension 
to being lost, without a light in this subterranean limbo; 
therefore it was 

Resolved, That we should retrace our steps with all possible 
dispatch ; and it was further 

Resolved, That a copy of the-e resolutions should be com- 
municated to the friar in some manner. 

The friar understood, to our infinite delight, and wobbled 
out toward the light, muttering constantly as he wobbled some- 
thing that he evidently intended as explanatory of things seen 
or being seen. The only thing we ever did understand of all 
his chaptered discourse was when on the return he stopped at 
a grave in the wall and directed us to hold our lights inside 
the gruesome p^ace. A skeleton lay there, of whom we were not 
informed, but the friar called attention to a crack in the skull 
and by a pantomime indicated to our understanding that it 
was done by an American with his cane to see if it was genuine. 

And still every sight we see in Rome is saturated with gloom; 
the whole city a scheme of melancholy in all its various oppres- 
sive phase's. It was plain to us that the tragedies of Rome sur- 
vived her fall ; the comedies all perished when she fell and are 
forgotten. 

The Appian Way runs straight as a measured vista from 
the city yonder, by these catacombs and out across the Cam- 



208 



Six and One Abroad 








^T 'Jl^Jk'Jm, 






The Tragcdi) of the Cataconihs 209 

pagna desolation and down to Sonthern Italy, for a distance of 
three hundred miles. It : pavement of lava flagstones may yet 
be sc^en in many plaees after the lapse of 2,200 years. AVhat 
road is there in America that would have any traces left after 
the elements had beaten and lashed it for twenty centuries"? 
The road was just fifteen feet wide — that is, the paved por- 
tion — and for the first ten miles was flanked on each side by 
a paved walk. 

How those Roman emperors, having won the highest dis- 
tinctions in the world, dreaded the oblivion of death. How 
ihey sought to perpetuate themselves in monuments and, to 
make cocksure that they would survive the calamity of death, 
obliterated one after another all monuments, buildings and sel- 
fish traces left by their predecessors. The Appian Way was 
the most public of public place^ and therefore the fittest spot 
for monuments of vain monarchs and notables. 

How different was this old burial highway of the rich from 
the tenements of the catacombs. For ten miles the road was 
lined with magnificent tombs in the old days, and of these 
there are still some imposing remains, but, strange retribution 
of Fate, scarcely one, a solitary one of the whole vainglorious 
roster that was laid to rest with pomp and ceremony is now 
known to history. 

AVe drove half way to Albano, fourteen, miles along the 
course of this famous thoroughfare, alighting at intervals to 
explore a ruined tomb, to chip a piece of marble from a pros- 
trate column or steal a fragment from a frieze that had strayed 
from its first position. Everywhere there was ruin and desola- 
tion, as if Time, at the limit of toleration, had smashed all the 
marble greatness of Rome and then had neglected to clean up 
the rubbish. The rich and the noble of the Appian Way are 
just as dead as the humble plebs who were locked in safety 
boxes in the galleries of the catacombs. 

What a monumental street of death, this road along which 
we are plunging now. What memories of the palmy years of 
the empire crowd for notice upon the memory. 

The sun carries with him on his journey beyond the sea a 
cortege of golden chariots and retinue of liveried attendants. 



210 Six and One Abroad 

the only monarch of all those that rode in triumph upon the 
Appian road in the great days of Roman supremacy that has 
retained a whit of his former pomp and prestige. 

It is night — a symbol of the long) night that has prevailed 
since the thousand years of day, in Rome. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

The Colosseum hij Moonlight. 

If there is any time when the melancholy of Rome seems 
more oppressive than at others it is at the close of day, when 
the night issues in shadowy livery from the encompassing hills 
and all the multitudes of houses huddle together, seemingly 
closer than in the daytime, like startled things that are afraid 
of the ghosts of the past. 

At such a time, by premeditation in order to experience 
every possible sensation that a combination of full moon, mag- 
nificent ruin and tragic recollection could present, I stood with 
the preachers and others in the arena of the Colos-eum. 

The moon rose early and flashed a broadside of light upon 
the old amphitheater and through the lucent sheen, shuddering 
— and who could help it who knew aught of the crimsoned his- 
tory of the place — we looked around upon the empty shell and 
tried to couple it up with its fearful and wonderful past ; upon 
the terraces of ruined tiers of seats one above the other, up 
to the crumbling perimeter of the top, in each shadow lurking, 
we surmised, the spirts of those who were murdered to amuse 
a heartless public. The black openings into tunnels that led 
to lairs long since abondoned seemed to yawn with the ennui 
of non-use. No hungry beasts Avere there, but the passages 
were open, and when some one mischievously cried out, "The 
beasts! the beasts!" it startled the little company, causing 
them to involuntarily leap to the first tier ; and then in affected 
fear we ran, all the company separated and walked and ran 
to every part of the great open space. Later we came together 
again to hear from the lips of Cicero, who knew the story well, 
the details of the orgies that once characterized the terrible 
festivities. 

As the speaker told in graphic manner of the crimes com- 
mitted there in the name of sport, the whole gruesome enter- 
tainment materialized before our eyes in a realistic manner. 
AVe could see the old theater rehabilitated as of yore. We 



212 Six and One Abroad 

could hear the heralds outside announcing the program of the 
fete. We could see the people come from all parts of the city 
of three millions and fill the space until a multitude of 80,000 
were waiting for the performance to begin, the galleries choked 
with the riff-raff of the streets, and the lower tiers occupied 
by the well-dressed aristocracy and elite. We heard the shouts 
from the upper rows that announced the appearance of the em- 
peror at the imperial door, and we saw him ent rein gorgeous 
apparel followed by a retinue of attendants, and the great 
throng burst into salvos of applause. We saw the vestal vir- 
gins follow in white gowns and pallid faces, and behind them 
the senators in togas richly embroidered. 

We saw the preliminary sacrifices with which the old super- 
stition always prefaced undertakings of moment. 

And now the music, that subtle influence which nerves men 
to the endurance of slaughter and solaces them in suffering, 
thunders forth, and with the audience on the edge of ex- 
pectancy, the gladiators, bronze-muscled and expert with the 
sword, dash into the arena and line up in parallels, saluting 
the head of the empire. Between them passes a long line of 
wretches — old men and women, slaves and prisoners, the de- 
spised of all classes and conditions — and the backs of these 
miserables are struck repeatedly and fiercely with scourges 
in the hands of the gladiators; and we hear the laughter and 
cat-calls of the galleries as the victims shrink from the lash 
or cry out in pain. And why not laughter? For this over- 
ture of the whip and blood is a mild pastime in comparison 
with the horrors that are to follow. 

We see the gladiatoi^s now — heroes of the ring — pass in 
review before the imperial box and hear each of them exclaim 
as he bows: "Caesar morituri te salutant." This amid great 
applause, and the first act closes. 

Our versatile historian has related the features of this 
tragedy so often that his voice is never softened by the least 
trace of pathos in its telling, and he continues the thrilling 
story mechanically, pointing here and there to locate the va- 
rious scenes of the drama with the same sang froid that we 
would detail the doings of a circus. 



The ('oJosscinii bij MooiiJi/jIrt 213 

''Before those dark pasages yonder," says he, "grated doors 
used to swing. Back underneath, the tunnels connected with 
the cages, where the beasts were kept in a starved condition 
for days to madden them with hunger to make sure of their 
proper behavior in the arena." 

Following him intently, and as he continues the thrilling 
narrative into the next scene, we see the shrinking, frightened 
lines of slaves and prisoners who suffered fiagellation in 
the first act, reappear and fall in hopeless heaps about the 
ring, some running to the imperial box beseeching pardon un- 
availingly for release from the doom that aw^aits them. We 
hear the tense silence, yes, hear it as plainly as we do the 
creaking doors that are lifted by attendants and swung back 
upon their hinges. We see the gaunt devils of the jungle 
spring into the ring, their ribs visible from fiendishly-forced 
denial. We see them gaze for a moment startled at the over- 
hanging thirongs — and we wish with all our hearts that they 
could leap right into the midst of them, and spare the inno- 
cents which are at their mercy. We see them crouch and quiver 
with instinctive stealth quite unnecessary, and rush with the 
fury of their ferocious natures to a banquet of human flesh. 
AVe hear the shrieks of the women and the groans and cries 
of the men and women and the smothered snarl of the beasts as 
their throats are choked ; and while the speaker does not go that 
far into the details, we know that as a part of the ghastly after- 
math, the ground is crimson and the beasts, still unappeased, 
are licking the trickling rills of blood. 

Glutted and docile, the animals are driven from the arena, 
and attendants lay a layer of sand, while issuing from in- 
genious jets disposed about the amphitheater sprays of per- 
fumes and disinfectants offset the odors of the hideous car- 
nage. And the better to dissipate them, the awnings over- 
spreading the multitude, are agitated by mechanical devices. 

The bones and bloody matted heads of hair and crimson rags 
and remnants of mangled flesh are dumped outside in the 
spoliarum, and the audience begins to buzz into tete-a-tetes, 
louder and louder growing until the clamor becomes an up- 
roarious demand for the next scene. 



214 



Six and One Abroad 




Tlic Colos.scuni by Moonlight 215 



Look! The doors of portals splendid then, gloomy, gaping 
holes now, are opened and the gladiators reappear in the ring, 
this time in chariots drawn by the best stallions of the empire. 
Again they salute the emperor with the cry heard throughout 
the vast interior: "Caesar morituri te salutant." Each car- 
ries a short sword and a shield; powerful fellows they are, 
nurtured and bred in the forests of the Rhone and of the 
Danube and the Rhine. Alighting with vigorous step, the cars 
and steeds are hurried out by attendants, a trumpet is sounded, 
and they enter the lists of mortal combat, amid excited huzzas 
that are heard in the Alban hills and beyond the Tiber. Such 
fencing, such clanging of shields under the strokes of steel, 
was never seen before nor since. Every expert thrust, every 
deft defense is noted by the assembly and approved with ap- 
plause. But now a shield is shivered and falls, and a duelist 
sinks with a fatal wound, and as his head droops in weakness, 
the pathetic words of Byron, who stood where we are standing 
and who saw the vision we are seeing, comes to mind : 

"I see before me the gladiator lie. 

He leans upon his hand — his manly brow 

Consents to death, but conquers agony 

And his drooped head sinks gradually low. 

And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow 

From the red gash fall heavy, one by one. 

The arena swings around him — he is gone. 

Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won. 

He heard it but heeded not — his eyes 
AVere with his heart, and that was far away; 
He recked not of the life he lost nor prize, 
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay 
There were his young barbarians all at play, 
There was their Dacian mother— he their sire . 
Butchered to make a Roman holiday." 

During the reigns of Claudius, Domitian and Diocletian the 
last scene in the tragedy of this sport was reserved especially 



216 



Si I and One Abroad 




The Colosseum hij Mooulight 217 



for the contest between Christians and wild animals, which 
was a cniel farce, the Christians being allowed to defend 
themselves with arms they could illy nse. Sometimes artificial 
mounds of soil and shrubs and grass would appear mysteriously 
in the arena and out of these tigers, bears and hyenas would 
spring, arousing the audience to transports of savage excite- 
ment. 

A door opens and a long line of human beings appear, driven 
by goads and scourges. In the hands of each a .sword is 
placed, a mockery not unlike that which Jesus underwent at 
Jerusalem. With these poor weapons they are to defend them- 
selves against the beasts. I see them turn their faces to heaven, 
not in pleading for rescue from their fate, for they have known 
thousands of their colleagues in religion to go the same route 
and there is no hope of their exemption and they expect no 
favors from God nor man in this instance. But upon their 
faces is a look of assurance that with the bloody dissolution 
of this house of their body they are soon to be with the Father 
and Son in person. 

Then— a hurricane of flying stripes and shaggy manes and 
struggling arms and shrieks and groans and blood and crunching 
of bones. Oh, God, is it possible that any creature Thou hast 
made in Thine own image can become so brutally depraved as to 
tolerate and applaud such fiendish horrors as these. 

A lady faints over there in the dress circle; she is fanned 
and brought to with the remark: "It was so foolish of me, I 
know; I never could stand the sight of blood." 

I have not overdrawn this picture; indeed I have not drawn 
it strong enough to accord with the facts if history be correct. 
In this cruel manner thousands of Christians perished during 
the four centuries of the life of the amphitheater. Thus 
perished Ignatius, the Christian bishop who knelt in the arena 
with a hundred thousand eyes upon him and exclaimed: "I 
am the Lord's wheat and must be broken before I can become 
the bread of Christ." 

With such a history how great the satisfaction in knowing 
that the Colosseum is now a ruin forever. It looks as if Provi- 



218 Six and One Abroad 

dence had with a scythe of impatience and terrible retribution 
cut the mammoth thing in two. 

In the dews of the night and in the glow of the moon which 
invested the scene with solemnity I looked upon this superb 
eclipse of man's creation and thought I had never seen a more 
impressive sight. Day after day, and every day without fail 
I returned to it, drawn by the irresistible charm it possessed 
and with every visit it assumed a new symbolic phase — now a 
crater of cruelty happily extinct; now a giant in decay, his 
vitals torn out and his great frame rigid and bleached in cen- 
turies of sun ; or a vast shell whence the red-winged fledgling", 
of revelry have flown- but always the same majestic, pathetic, 
splendid, awful, tottering pile, deserted and silent as the tombs 
where the conscienceless multitudes it amused now sleep, its 
arches with the stars shining through like the souls of the 
saints purified with its tribulations, and always inspiring the 
same mysterious spell of awe and wonder and reverie such as is 
felt nowhere else in all the earth. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

Guides Eli mi }i ((ted. 

Parting with guides is such sweet i-orrow. After Rome we 
were not to see them again except in a desultory sort of way. 

There is nothing that inflates the ego more than the op- 
portunity to tell it first; to know something others do not 
know and to have others hang dependently on one's words of 
information. The guide is the best specimen extant of the 
ego thus inflated. He becomes quite naturally a haughty, dis- 
dainful, vain and pompous person, who is in no sense a server, 
but a rabbi, a tutor to the untutored. Whether Syrian, Greek, 
Arab, Turk or Italian, he is the same everywhere, himself the 
central, brilliant sun, his followers his obsequious satellites. 
He loves to startle, to pose dramatically, to cause the eyes to 
bulge, to crush with amazing statements, and for that reason 
he is' not always dependable. His remarks are invariably 
stereotyped and declamatory, a speech committed to memory 
that an interruption will demolish utterly. His five dollars a 
day is equal to a prince's salary in any of those benighted lands, 
and he is therefore envied by all his racial kind. 

This peripatetic historian and philosopher passed into the 
Great Behind, at Rome, and became thereafter a memory; and, 
incidentally, it was the best change we ever made in our pro- 
gramme. 

Again, at Rome I permitted myself to become separated tem- 
porarily from my clerical friends who had been a solace and 
pleasure all the way around the Mediterranean. It came about 
this way : We had seen all the great ruins— the Forum, Colos- 
seum, the Catacombs, Baths of Caracalla and others and others 
—all of the great churches of Catholicism— St. Peter's, St. Paul's 
Beyond the^ AValls, St. John's Lateran, and others. All the 
great pictures— The Transfiguration, Last Judgment, Aurora, 
this last being absolutely the prettiest and greatest of them all. 
Looked to me like we had about covered the ground. 

But the Connoisseur wove a spell over the other members 



220 Six and One Abroad 

of the majority and persuaded them to wait over a couple of 
days to study the pictures in the Vatican more critically; and 
that straw broke the camel's back of my own patience and 
civility and I got up a little revolution and seceded, going to 
Venice alone. 

Besides, the ruthless majority had outlined a programme 
that included a couple more days in the galleries of Florence, 
and that codicil to the regular programme was an overt breach 
of hitherto congenial relations and there was no alternative 
but secession. 



CHAPTER XXy. 

Venice — Its Amphibious Life. 

I am glad it was night when we entered Venice, for the first 
impressions of a scene are the most lasting, and no conspiracy 
of conditions could have displayed the attractions of this city 
of the sea to better advantage than those that got together on 
the night of our arrival. 

No carriages: were at the station; that was strange. No 
street cars offered passage; that was remarkable. There were 
no streets even that we could walk upon. Was there anything 
more queer in the wide, wide world? But in lieu of cabs and 
cars there were boats, peculiar long-necked boats, that were 
manned by curious boatmen who stood uniformly against the 
boats' bobbing necks and beckoned for patronage without ut- 
tering a sound to assist the pantomim(\ And when they were 
loaded up. behold the whole collection broke ranks simulta- 
neously as if by city law or custom and yet not a sound was 
uttered except in sotto voce conversation, not an oar, even, 
was splashed in the rhythm and concert of the departing ar- 
gosy. The boatmen drove their vehicles forward with deft and 
delicate manipulation and every gurgle was suppressed lest 
it violate the regime of solemn silence. 

AVe were on the Grand Canal, the Broadway of Venice, and 
never did a nabob ride in a softer carriage than ours that 
glided noiselessly and easily on the liquid street. The lights fell 
from ad.iacent buildings in showers of jewels within reach of 
our hands; the boatman bent and rose with the intlection of 
his oar, and in the semi-darkness there was enough of the 
unique and the wierd to raise the question as to whether we 
were indeed in a great and novel cis-eternity city or were at 
one of the terminals of the River Styx. Out of the water stately 
buildings rose without sidewalk or awning. Stygian boats 
flitted hither and thither in the stillness, and darted into mys- 
terious alleys, while others as suddenly appeared out of dark 
rents in the row of marble palaces and took their places on 



222 Six and One Abroad 

this Broadway of travel. Bridges lifted their ponderous humps 
above us as we passed. Once we came upon a merry party in 
a motor boat and their laughter and the music of stringed in- 
struments was a pleasing interruption of the solemn silence. 

And on, with other deviations and diversions, to the hotel pier. 

Italy is a land of song and it had often been my wish that I 
might be awakened some night during the journey in that 
country by sweet singing such as Juliet heard from Romeo or 
Caruso or Tettrazini serve to applauding audiences. The wish 
threatened to materialize when I was awakened during my 
first niglht in Venice by singing under my window. But an- 
ticipation suffered a severe relapse when the music was diag- 
nosed and I feel quite sure there was neither a Caruso nor a 
Tettrazini in that bunch of catawaulers under the window at 
midnight. There was not even music in the third degree, and 
I judge they were all drunk in the first degree. 

Next morning when I awoke I thoughtlessly lay and listened 
for the hoofbeats of travel and traffic, for the rumble of car- 
riage wheels and the clatter of foot-leather on the walks; but 
not a hoofbeat, not a rumble nor a clatter was heard. Silence 
brooded like a gentle spirit o'er the — whatever there was on 
the outside. 

Going down into the hotel lobby I found a lonesome absence 
of anybody and everybody— not a soul in sight— and an atmos- 
phere of damp and semi-lit solemnity that gave notice that it 
was too early for visitors to be out. At the door I stood on the 
brink of a stream of water, dark green, motionless, eight feet 
or so wide like the backwater of an overflow. Above the water 
line of the night's inactivity the bases of the buildings were 
wet for a foot or more and were slick with water moss. A plat- 
form or wharf of limited dimensions marked the landing place 
of passengers and baggage. The water street was crooked this 
way and that, and visible only in either direction as far as one 
could throw a derby hat. A bridge humped itself into a semi- 
circle yonder and connected up the broken course of a foot 
path. A vague indefinite fog whose active principle was 
a cold, rheumatic threat, rose from the water and in- 
sinuated itself into every nook and opening. The foot path 



Venice — Its Ampluhious Life 223 



til)ove mentioned was of stone and was jnst wide enough for 
one to toncli tlie buildings on each side with his hands while 
standing in the middle. Following it to the summit of the 
bridge I looked up at the slit of sky visible now from this 
vantage point, and then passed on into the dark rift whieh the 
path made in the mass of stone beyond. I met a woman, the 
first live object I had encountered, barefooted and in head rag, 
and I marveled at her endurance, in barefeet, of the cold 
dampness. A little further T ran upon an open meat and vege- 
table market where in a room a few feet square dressed chicken, 
waterfowl, grapes, cress and wine were displayed in the dim 
light of an olive oil lamp. T suppose I ought to call this lane 
a street, for such it was, and one of the most used of all the 
streets in Venice. I thougHit that other Italian towns were 
wonderfully economical in their street space, but here was 
street economy to the squeezing point. Really I was sur- 
prised to find that any of the streets of Venice were other than 
of water. 

In the course of this aimless ramble other paths occasionally 
led off at varying angles from the one I was following, and I 
wondered if I would ever come to an open space big enough, 
as Mark Twain said of a steamer cabin, 'Ho swing a cat in with 
perfect safety to the cat," but such an extravagance of elbow 
room never developed. It is to be expected that children reared 
in such contracted quarters would be sallow-faced and spindle- 
legged, and ^0 they are — pitiful sprouts of humanity — and that 
men and women imprisoned there could not propagate an idea 
higher than their heads, and so they do not — these amphibious 
salamanders of rock and water that burrow in the crannies of 
stone for a living and have their pleasures in the streets of 
the sea. 

But hark ! The voice of a liell resounds in the still morning 
air, and the melody works its way down into the chasm where 
I halt and listen, and eddies and swirls in a chaotic bedlam of 
music that seoms sweeter to my ears than any I have ever heard 
before — the sweeter no doubt because of the contrast with the 
melancholy situation and the scheme of prevailing silence. 

It is the call to mas-:, of Catholic Venice. Quickly the path- 



224 



Six and One Abroad 




BRIDGE OF SIGHS. 



Venice — Its Ampluhious Life. 225 



v.ay is peopled with pedestrians who are bent upon heeding its 
invitation, more and more thiekly peopled, until I cannot make 
my way against the contrary current, and I turn and drift with 
it. After being veritably pushed with the momentum of this 
freshet of humanity through a series of devious canyons whose 
sides are worn slick and glazed with the process of such loco- 
motion for centuries, I am ejected with the rest with pop-gun 
effect — I am surprised that we did not actually pop with the 
sudden emission — into a spacious scjuare, where the light, in 
contrast with the dismal limbo of the channels by which we 
have come, seems to fall in floods of splendor, and a great 
cathedral rears its richly ornamented front the full width of 
the farther side. 

It was a. splendid stretch of religious generosity that set aside 
for beauty's sake and convenience and comfort such an ex- 
pansive plat of space in sur-crowded Venice. It was a band of 
expert artists with the chisel who carved such a noble front 
on the city's leading building and decorated the marble shops 
surrounding the square with such taste. Everything here is 
of marble and the exterior of every house is a mass of marble 
embroidery, the lower floors occupied by the best shops of 
Venice, the upper floors (for the buildings are uniformly two 
stories high) used as warerooms for surplus stock, and for 
offices, and workrooms of the lace and glass workers, the most 
proficient on the globe in these lines ; those upper rooms com- 
ing out beyond the lower ones and supported by a substructure 
of carved marble columns and graceful arches that produce 
an entrancing vista of corridors along which the never dimin- 
ishing throngs of travelers walk all day long. 

St. Mark's is a wonderful cathedral I suppose, for that is 
the reputation it bears, some declaring it to be the most beau- 
tiful building in the world. John Ruskin in his ''Stones of 
Venice" uses every adjective of all the dictionaries and then 
when the supply is exhausted, invents others, and weaves them 
all into the most extravagant rhetorical bouquets in describing 
it. He says of St. Mark's: 

''AH the great square seems to have opened from it in a 
kind of awe, that we may see it far away — a multitude of pil- 



226 Six and One Abroad 

lars and domes clustered into a long, low pyramid of colored 
light ; a treasure heap, it seems, partly of gold and partly of 
opal and mother of pearl, hollowed beneath into great vaulted 
porches, sealed with fair mosaic, and beset with sculpture of 
alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory — sculpture fan- 
tastic and involved, of palm leaves and lilies, and grapes and 
pomegranates, and birds, clinging and fluttering among the 
branches, all twined together into an endless network of buds 
and plumes; and in the midst of it the solemn forms of angels, 
sceptered and robed to the feet and leaning to each, other across 
the gates, their figures indistinct among the gleaming of the 
golden ground through the leaves beside them, interrupted and 
dim like the morning light among the branches of Eden when 
first its gates were angel guarded long ago. And around 
the walls of the porches there are set pillars of variegated 
stones, jasper and porphry and deep green serpentine spotted 
with flakes of snow, and marbles that half refuse and half yield 
to the sunshine, Cleopatra like, 'their bluest veins to kiss' — the 
shadow as it steals back from them revealing line after line 
of azure undulations as a receding tide leaves the waved sand ; 
their capitals rich with interwoven tracery, rooted knots of 
herbage, and drifting leaves of acanthus and vine, and mystical 
signs, all beginning and ending with the cross ; and above them 
in the broad archivolts, a continuous chain of langiuage and 
life — angels and the signs of heaven and the labors of men ; 
and above these, another range of glittering pinnacles, mixed 
with white arches edged with scarlet flowers — a confusion of 
delight amidst which the breasts of the Greek horses are seen 
blazing in their breadth of golden strength, and the St. Mark's 
Lion, lifted on a blue field covered with stars, until at last, 
as if in ecstacy, the crests of the arches break into a marble 
foam, and toss themselves far into the blue sky in flashes and 
wreathes of sculptured spray, as if the breakers on the Lido 
shore had been frost-bound before they fell, and the sea nymphs 
had inlaid them with coral and amethyst." 

The ravings of an art maniac ; rhetorical delirium. It is 
simply inexplicable how such a battered piece of architecture 
could have wrought such a bias in Ruskin's master intellect 



Venice — Its Amphihious Life 227 



as to throw him liodily into such a spasm. 1 took his prose 
poem of description anc compared it with the original, and as 
a picture sometimes flatters the subject, his flatters the original 
till the likeness is hardly recognizable. There are the sculp- 
tured vines and birds and angels and things, but the "azure 
undulations" need the pencil of a strong imagination to touch 
them up to make the whole look "as clear as amber and as 
delicate as ivory," and that Garden of Eden figure is manu- 
factured out of the whole cloth. St. JNIark's is a tremendous old 
pile of marble and stone patched up with tolerable taste 
through the centuries and the etchings of figures on its front, 
once beautiful no doubt, are now dingy with age and hacked 
by Aveather till they are beautiful no longer only to connois- 
seurs like Ruskin. 

I entered this venerable cathedral with the profound rever- 
ence which was due it. A great altar, replete with stained 
statues and glittering with candles, arrested the eye first. Be- 
fore it worshippers were kneeling in devotion while a priest 
moved back and forth, muttering the ritual, his back resplen- 
dent with a cross in gilt and purple as large as his own body. 
It was that time of day when the sun could send a ray through 
the smoke of incense that filled the interior and I could trace 
it from where it entered through an aperture in the top as it 
widened into a growing^ glowing triangle and fell like a search- 
light from heaven upon the brilliant robe of the officiating 
priest. Behind it, ^'isible through its translucence, the choir 
sat in the solemn darkness and their chanted music rolled up 
in inspiring volume and filled the building with melody com- 
pelling reverence and stirring the soul into harmony with the 
sacred environment. The walls, gray ?nd smutted by Time, 
were broken in places and tattered, but the paintings by the 
world masters, still called great, could be traced vaguely by 
an effort of the eye on the wall and on the vast span of the 
ceiling of the dome where gold leaf and costly mosaic alter- 
nated with the color of painted saints and Apostles in the stiff 
enactment of scenes from Scripture. The floor of square blocks 
of marble was irregular and bulged up in waves in places as 
though the fish of the sea had made their bed under it and 



228 Six and One Abroad 



pushed it out of place. Monstrous stone arches leaped from 
pillar to pillar and from beneath their graceful spans dark 
corridors crouched solemnly and in them were altars, one where 
the Virgin was represented in a picture, wearing a silver crown 
and all over her body, concealing it entirely except her pathetic 
eyes, silver hearts, the votive offering of mothers who in this 
way gained and kept her esteem and special favor. In other 
corners other altars to the first great saints; and at each and 
all of them a kneeling crowd . of worshippers. 

But the pigeons — they were the distinguishing feature of 
this touted spot — Ruskin did not as much as spill a pint of rhe- 
toric on them. There was beauty, to be sure, in the decorations 
of the overdressed and dirty old church ; there was a sort of 
glamour of romance and thrilling history in the stone-laced 
ducal palace and the church that dates back to the time when 
the light of civilization first went, out at the genesis of the dark 
ages ; but all these frozen flowers of architecture were as moon- 
light to sunlight in comparison with the brood of pigeons that 
operated in a rival demonstration in their midst. 

Ever since Enrico Dandalo was ducal dictator in the year 
1192 when they were introduced into the place, these pigeons 
have been a feature of St. Mark's Square, and during all the 
intervening time they have been held as sacred and protected 
from injury or interference. For six hundred years they were 
the special proteges of the government, but when tourist travel 
became extensive and visitors showed a disposition to feed them 
all they wanted, the government saw a chance to escape the 
expense of furnishing them provender, and they have since 
lived on the charity of tourists — lived and grown fat. And 
never were there more persistent beggars. They lie in wait 
for a fresh arrival and pounce upon him with a most pathetic 
pleading, and never was a heart so hard as to refuse them 
what they ask. The moment I stepped from the arched cor- 
ridors into the open, a covey of bright plumed birds swooped 
down to within a few feet of my head, fluttering and crooning 
dolefully, and as I stopped and received the delegation with 
manifest pleasure, they proceeded to alight one by one on my 
shoulders and arms and actually scrapped for position on any 



Venice — Its Ampliihious Life 229 



part of my body. Really I was very much surprised by this 
sudden and unexpected reception and was not prepared to do 
the right thing by them; had not learned the usual ways and 
means. I opened my hand, but they spurned it and fluttered 
and begged, even flopping down into my coat pockets and bur- 
glarizing them. Walking on further I came upon a party of 
English people who were feeding seeds to the birds and I in- 
quired where I might get some of the seeds, but before they 
had time to answer an old lady approached with a basket of 
food and I invested. This time I was covered with begging 
birds, hundreds of them fighting for a position on my anatomy 
until their number actually became quite a burden. They did 
not exhibit the slig'htest timidity and ate from my hands as 
though it were a saucer in some secluded rookery. Everybody 
feeds the pigeons and if they do not die of gluttony it is not 
because they haven't the finest opportunity to do so. 

Who cares for old cathedrals and oil paintings in Venice 
when one can romp with the pigeons — blessed antidotes of 
gloom? Or who would squander precious moments in doge's 
palaces and dungeons and bridges of sighs, when one can 
ride in crescent boats in lustrous chutes and amid the queerest 
surroundings of conditions and customs the world ever saw? 
Listen. ]\Irs. Vermicelli desires to go calling. She does not 
direct the coachman to hitch a span of blacks to the barouche 
and go sailing out in the sun under a dainty parasol, nor does 
she spin lightly along paved streets in a honking limousine. No, 
not in Venice. But she raises a window and directs her gon- 
dolier to wake up from his siesta and to swing his boat around 
to the door and await her descent and embarkation, whereupon 
at her pleasure she seats herself in the cushioned and canopied 
little cab and the boatman in obedience to orders rounds in 
at this home and that and assists his charge into this door and 
that, and then falls asleep in the sun pending the termination 
of the call. 

A picnic, party is organized ; they do not go hay riding in the 
moonshine and pull up at a resort in the mountains ; no indeed ; 
but a great gondola with a brace of gaudily decked oarsmen is 
chartered, and an orchestra is engaged, and torches are swung 



230 Six and One Abroad 



from the uplifted front and rear of the vehicle, and torches and 
laughter and song and chatter and ripples are intermixed in the 
queerest of entertainments. 

A gondola is unlike any other boat that was ever constructed. 
As lithe and nimble as a racer, as graceful as a nymph, it is not 
a painted and decorated thing that has been made for exhibi- 
tion, but in color and equipment and design looks the sea-worthy 
craft that it is and has been for centuries ; at home on the water 
and with no amphibious designs on the land. The proud uplifted 
front is not unlike that of a swan, and the shining comb of brass 
or silver might well be the beak of a bird of the sea, while the 
curving rear could just as well as not represent the tail. It is 
always narrow, as everything in Venice is narrow, but makes up 
in length what it loses in width, and the mystery is what sustains 
the slender thing so steadily while the passengers get off and on 
and move freely and carelessly on board. Bobbing everlastingly 
like a cork it keeps its balance perfectly and without the least, 
disposition to upset. 

The chief surprise in the first sight of the gondola is its color. 
I had gathered the idea somehow that it was gaudy, even spectac- 
ular. On the contrary it is as black as any hearse that ever led 
a procession to a cemetery. The little cab in the center is black, 
too, and as if to emphasize the funereal scheme this apartment is, 
covered with black velvet and trimmed with the embroidery that 
is usual to the decorations of a coffin. One feels very much like 
one were riding in a coffin, in truth ; and then the motive power 
is a gondolier dressed in conventional black, and the itinerary is. 
along a dark water course much of the time where sunshine can- 
not go, and little of its reflections even, the whole con^bination. 
suggestive of a funeral procession with one's self as the subject 
matter. 

For the experience of the gondola ride as well as for what- 
ever it might reveal of the environs of Venice, I shipped one 
beautiful morning for the island of Murano where the glazing- 
works of Venice were located. 

For ages the Venetians have been noted for their expert crea- 
tions in glass. Their shops are filled with articles made of it in 
the most delicate and beautiful designs, and I am convinced that 



Venice — Its Amphibious Life 231 



there is nothing ever heretofore constructed of cloth, wood or iron 
that has not been imitated in glass by these artists of Venice, 
even to pianos and steam engines. It is not uncommon to see 
hanging in a shop window a lady's society gown with delicate 
trimming wrought into the most exquisite effects, every particle 
of it made of glass, men 's hats of glass, clocks whose face and run- 
ning machinery are of glass; and besides these, all such useful 
things as chandeliers and dining room dishes of glass may be 
seen in charming and astonishing profusion. Americans buy 
these fragile things by the big box full, the merchant guarantee- 
ing safe delivery across the water. 

With the perfection of ease and grace we swam the noiseless 
meanderings of the streets until we darted at length out upon the 
quiet mirror of the Lagoon, where the view broadened and was 
fine and the air was pure and refreshing. I do not know 
whether it is vapor from the water or a feature of the atmos- 
phere, but a curtain of haze, always tinted with soft colors, con- 
stantly hangs over Venice and its environs, a condition that adds, 
to its beauty and no doubt also veils it from excessive heat. 
Several islets were in the radius of the eye, some of them over- 
hung with streamers of black smoke as if their beautiful deco- 
rations of houses were on fire. The sable-garbed gondolier now 
put more muscle into his strokes, plying his boat vigorously 
from the rear, and bowing wdth each effort almost to the level 
of the little platform where he stood. The boat itself woke 
from its drifting stupor and began to rock like a thing of life 
while the shining prow and its graceful slender neck seemed 
to be peering steadily ahead at its destination, allowing nothing 
to distract it from its purpose. The water was green here, blue 
yonder, purple further toward the great sea, while behind, it 
reflected the whole of that part of the city that could look into 
its wavy mirror. Gondolas rode the vast thoroughfare like so 
many mallards, and white winged boats, the wings expansive 
and the boats diminutive, hovered over a glassy surface that was 
so glistening and glassy that I wondered if it were not the 
radiant overflow of the glazing vats of Murano. 

The city dwindled in the perspective, and in its pretty set- 
ting the entire absence of smoke from anv of its multitude of 



232 Six and One Abroad 



counterfeit chimneys told the tale of its dearth of industry and 
its contentment with forever admiring itself in the mirror of its 
streets. 

They were making chandeliers at Murano that morning, such 
as are sold to foolish Americans for $100 and to Europeans for 
$20 or less. The rapidity and dexterity of the workmen in trans- 
forming a shapeless mass of molten stuff into a dream of beauty 
was little short of a miracle. Glass making is one of the two 
main sources of revenue upon which the Venetians live ; the 
other being lace making — just glass and lace; upon their excel- 
lency in these two arts, and upon the perennial recurrence of 
the tourist, their subsistence depends. 

There are in Venice 7,000 girls who ply the bodkin day and 
night to supply the enormous demand for Venetian laces and 
embroideries. The lady tourists gather around this etheral stuff 
and sigh over it as Maud Muller sighed for the Judge. It is a 
matter past the comprehension of mortal mind why it is that 
women prefer a hemstitched handkerchief above any terrestrial 
scene or historic study. There isn't the least doubt in the world 
that the last one of the sex would rather spend an hour in a 
lace shop than a week in the Alps. Let a crowd be gathered 
on a ledge of the Rigi at sunrise, above the clouds that float 
by like a drifting sea of lint, and at that supreme moment of 
delight when the sun's rays fall in charming color on the 
evanescent stuff and it parts and displays the most gorgeous 
scenery that ever ravished the eye, just at that psychological 
moment let a peddler come along with an armful of Maltese 
or Venetian embroidery, and every skirted lump of femininity 
in that enchanted group would be panic stricken and leave the 
scene with its supernal glories to sigh and swoon in ecstacy over 
a piece of perforated silk. It's a part of woman's composition 
and can't be helped. Premises considered, the presumption is 
reasonable that Eve started the fad in Eden and that she hem- 
med and tucked the fig leaves of her wardrobe and drove holes 
through them with a stick to make them foolishingly decorative. 
It is feminine, it is constitutional, it is unavoidable. 

Laces, glass, water streets, a church, a dungeon, a ducal palace, 
a bridge, some old pictures, the pigeons — these are the features 



Venice — Its Ampliihions Life 233 

of Venice. Unless we care to take notice of the peculiar effects 
upon the people of their geographic isolation, which is not unin- 
teresting. I was waiting in the hotel lobby for a gondola to go 
to the railroad station, the day of my departure from Venice, 
when a native boy came in and begged for a penny. Taking 
advantage of the opportunity to question the little fellow about 
his life and customs, the "portier" serving as interpreter be- 
tween us, and learning that he had never been out of Venice 
and was ignorant of what the great world was like and that he 
really supposed it was almost like his own Venice, I won his at- 
tention and deep interest, though of course not his confidence, 
in my statements, by telling him some of the wonderful things in 
the land where I lived across the sea. Asked if he had ever 
seen a horse his reply was that he had seen the four bronze ones 
on the front of St. Mark's and pictures of them elsewhere. I 
told him I lived in a country where the people rode horses as 
the Venetians did their gondolas, and that the animals pulled 
wheeled vehicles that were filled with persons and that they ran 
at a speed twice as great as the swiftest gondola. The little fel- 
low's eyes enlargd with surprise and doubt, and finally twinkled 
with incredulity when I averred that in my country there were 
thousands of folks who never saw a body of water bigger than 
a West Texas ''tank," the dimensions of which I indicated. He 
was actually startled when I added that the streets of our towns 
were wide enough for a kid to turn a handspring in without 
endangering his neck. And how his mischievious eyes did almost 
break out of their confinement in his brown face when I related 
how in my country there were great spaces of dirt as big as the 
big sea which he looked out on every day, and not a canal in 
all of it, and that I could travel there in places for hours and 
never see a house nor a living person; and that there were 
curious things we called birds that sang sweet songs in strange 
shrubbery that we called trees, and bushytailed squirrels that 
leaped from limb to limb and rabbits that ran in the grass with 
ears as long as his arm and funny animals with horns that ate 
the grass and gave milk like the goats of Venice. I told him 
that we had churches, and that very, very few people attended 
them, and they had no candles, nor statues, nor graves in them, 
and the windows were opened and the sunlight let in. I told him 



234 Six and One Abroad 



there were lots of people in this strange land who got as much 
as $1.50 a day for their manual work ; and places in the ground 
were torn up with a concern called a plow and seed planted in 
it and the seeds gave birth to beautiful plants which in turn 
produced elliptical things packed tight with yellow kernels which 
when ground to powder were cooked and eaten, and other plants 
grew white bolls that were picked and converted into cloth. 

Then the gondola appeared, and Venice was soon a memory. 

At half past fourteen o'clock, which is 2:30 English time, I 
had a seat in a railroad cab, all alone and was crawling with 
the train over the long bridge toward the mainland. We had 
little more than passed the stretch of water than there appeared 
to me a vision of the most entrancing interest — a land of en- 
terprising people, of plunging trains laden with business-bent 
passengers and but few idle-minded tourists, and of spacious 
prairies virgin to the plow and yet others colored with waving 
grain, and colleges and schools and cities whose streets were lit 
with sprays of sunlight and swept with healthful breezes, and 
homes with environs of grass plats and trees and ample room 
for every needed purpose; and nestling snugly in the midst of 
the attractive scene, a cottage with familiar aspect, the sweet- 
est spot in all the earth and a woman and two little boys en- 
eastled there. 

I was sound asleep and dreaming. 

Wireless telegraphy? In all the long course of a journey in 
foreign lands, there is nothing more comforting than the trip 
the traveler takes oftimes in a dream. Swifter than the light- 
nings of wireless telegraphy he moves on the wings of subcon- 
scious thought and revisits the scenes of his home many thou- 
sands of miles away, brooking not the rolling steppes of sea nor 
storms en route, and looks upon the faces of those he loves and 
talks with them, and the only regret he has is that he cannot 
transport the body, too, and that his projected self must re- 
turn when the body awakes. 

Arousing from this snooze on Italy's bosom, I noticed I was 
not alone as I was when I started, for a lady had entered the 
carriage somewhere on the w^ay and occupied a seat opposite 
my own. Just we two. Upon my word I did not say a thing 
to her, nor she a word to me. We couldn't. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

Queen of the WorkVs Marbles. 

I do not care for cathedrals. They are too melancholy. I 
like people and incidents; above all, outdoors and something- 
doing. But here was a chance to see the chief of all the tribe 
of cathedrals and, having seen it, to be conscious that there was 
no use i/i wasting time on others. Therefore the stop of a night 
at Milan. Just a glimpse of the cathedral in the dawn and then 
at sunrise a resumption of the trip into the mountains and 
Switzerland. 

Even before the first faint signs of daylight had appeared I 
was in the piazza of the cathedral waiting for developments. It 
was just a house anyway, a church, an accident of travel. Why 
not see it quickly and be off? 

In that kind of temper, carele&s, impatient, expecting little 
and prejudiced against the object as one of a class and as a 
feature hardly worth the interruption its observation incurred, 
I saw and having seen, capitulated to, the prettiest structure on 
this terrestrial ball. I confess to a penchant for criticism and 
I tried hard to find some objection to this touted building. But 
it caught and chained my contrary will with its very first sublime 
pose in the twilight, and when it began to grow in form and 
grace with the rising sun and to take on the colors of flesh in 
its delicate statues, and finally stood fvilly disclosed in the bright 
full light of day, I was ashamed of my objective mood and was 
utterly carried away with admiration. 

The Cathedral of Milan is all that was ever claimed for it, 
and more. Not particularly grand nor sublime, it is neverthe- 
leas beautiful beyond the power of description. 

It is a poem in marble, with every graceful arch a stanza and 
each of its myriad statues a musical measure. 

If the creations in lace which Venetian experts had worked 
in silk was beyond my untutored faculties of appreciation, here 
was a superb creation in marble lace that was so infinitely superb 
that it staggered the understanding. 



236 



Six and One Abroad 



Take all the artful airy products of the needle, all the magnifi- 
cence of the mountains, the sweep of rivers, the flight of birds 
and compose them with the harmony of the grandest anthem, 
with not a broken pinion, nor a rugged chasm, nor a fractured 
segment nor a note of discord, into a symposium of translucent 
beauty, and the result will just as apt as not be the Cathedral of 
Milan. 

Like a queen in the proud consciousness of her station stands 
this sovereign of the world's marbles, gracefully erect under a 
crown of shivered spires and wearing a gown of faultless drapery 




CATHEDRAL OF MILAN. 



that is plaited and paneled and tucked and ruffled into the most 
exquisite of effects, the chief aristocrat of all the elite of con- 
structive art. 

And as one continues to look, enchanted, after the eye has 
caught the rhythm of a poem in the first casual view, and a 
little later the grace and elegance of a queen, the vision is in- 
variably transfigured into a sculptured garden where marble 
roses are in bloom and marble foliage hangs in frozen grace, and 
vistas of delight open and close their ranks of fretted spires. 

I admit it all without a doubting " if " or a detracting ' * but. ' ' 



Queen of the World's Mardles 237 



There is nothing else to do but confess. Criticism looks and 
drops its pen and hangs its head in the presence of the Cathedral 
of Milan. 

Nothing but marble has entered into the construction of this 
matchless building and that of the most immaculate of Paros, 
excepting the doors which are of bronze. Not a particle of 
wood composes its anatomy or dress and therefore nothing but 
an earthquake or a cyclone or the drums of Judgment Day can 
ever fracture its massive frame or disarrange its embroidered 
lingerie. 

The cathedral is five hundred feet long by a hundred and 
eighty feet wide and the eyes of the statues at the summit of 
the highest steeple look down on the pavement four hundred 
feet below. Some one has counted the multitude of marble figures 
and fixed their number at 9,086. They crown each of the 154 
pinnacles and occupy niches in the sides and embroider the 
angles and curves. From the pavement they look like miniatures 
but are in fact life size. They are not rough productions of 
amateur chisels, but were designed by Michelangelo and 
Raphael and cut according to minute specifications by these 
masters. Six months were required by each workman to turn 
out a single statue, and at this rate a little less than 20,000 
years would have been consumed if only one artist had done 
the carving. And then the lace-work, what almost infinite labor 
and patience and care must have gone into its execution! The 
shimmering forest of needles, the wilderness of spires, the frosty 
tracery of vines and foliage all wrought from white marble rep- 
resent tedious detail and much work, and the whole contributes 
to the most elaborate, most enchanting and costliest structure in 
the world. To a commercial American the question at once 
arises, what did it cost? And the answer is not easy. The 
marble was donated on the ground by an enterprising bishop; 
the labor of construction was obtained at small cost; and yet 
a hundred and fifty millions of dollars was spent upon it. Built 
in America, I should estimate its value at a round billion. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

Threading the Alps. 

Beyond Milan the scenerj^ passed out of the comparative de- 
gree into the superlative and remained in unquestioned su- 
premacy until beyond Switzerland. We were in the lap of a 
fertile plain that was littered with vineyards to every inch of 
its space, the distinguishing peculiarity of which was the sawed- 
off trunks of trees that performed the dual duty of supporting the 
wires upon which the vines ran and of producing fuel. The trees 
are sheared each winter and the annual surgery causes a rooty, 
ratty and ugly formation that gives them a grotesque appear- 
ance in the early spring before they have had time to hide their 
deformity in new dress. Up and down the valleys as far as the 
vision was unobtsructed by mountains or scenic bends these 
barbered trees of the vineyard in precise rows marched and 
counter-marched as we reviewed them. When we would stop, 
they would stop, and the very moment we were again in motion 
their maneuvers were renewed. 

At every road crossing there was a gate and a dumpy little 
woman. We had seen her often before on this flight through 
Italy and she was always of the same size and figure, always 
wearing the same gray uniform and waterproof helmet, always 
standing beside a little booth, always holding a horn in one 
hand and a club in the other. 

Meanwhile the blue-black cones of the Alps were growing 
more distinct and rising higher against the northern sky. It 
was yet quite early in the morning and they were so barren 
and gray and withal, in the distance, so smooth, that they bore 
the appearance of having been cut from granite during the 
night and arranged in tableau formation for the traveler's en- 
tertainment during the day. The early sunlight was upon them 
like a purple calcium and the shadows were folds in their robes. 

For a couple of hours we enjoyed this tableau and the evolu- 
tions of the shingled trees, and then a couple of big mountains 
which had been in conjunction stood aside at our approach and 



Treading the Alps 239 

admitted us to the first of a chain of galleries where the lluest 
lectures of the Old ]\Iaster, who lays it over them all, were 
swung. 

Just inside was Como, a pictures(iue town on the skirts of 
the mountains that duplicated its charms in a lake of the same 
name. An optional and popular excursion provided for a sail 
on this and another lake and an exciting mountain ride by rail, 
and I took advantage of this opportunity for a side trip. Pity 
that peculiar character whose sensibilities are so misdirected 
that he finds more pleasure in the painting? of Florence and 
the cathedrals and ruins of Rome than in these live issues of 
Nature. In the one there is solemnity, melancholy, depression, 
sadness, mumps, dumps, blue devils, doldrums, despondency, 
pessimism, penance, sorrow, discouragement, gloom, lamentation 
and despair ; in the other the progressive lessons of God — sweet- 
ness and purity and harmony and beauty and light and love. 
The preachers were in Florence while the gentleman was in 
Como. They were in ecstaey up to their ears before a Titian 
or a Veronese or a Reuben ; the gentleman was in raptures over 
a masterpiece of God. They were ambling along stuffy hallways 
trying to lift themselves by their bootstraps above that purely 
imaginary line that is supposed to separate the nude and the 
indecent from the artistic; the gentleman was in the midst of 
that holy place where innocence was paramount and where the 
grosser things M^ere not exposed. Pity the preachers; when 
they get to Heaven and find no Immaculate Conception and no 
lachrimose cathedrals I don't know what they will do for their 
part of the happiness that God has promised. I trust in great 
faith in His wisdom to be able to handle the difficult problem. 

It was thirty minutes before sailing time and there was noth- 
ing else to do and nothing more pleasing to* do than to stand on 
the deck of the steamer in waiting and look and admire. The 
hour wa.s the best of the day for observation and the time of 
the year the best to please the eye. The sun was yet out of 
sight and only the heads and breasts of the environing hills 
were favored with its rays. The rest was shadow and crystal 
and encircling walls of green and the fresh odors of the morn- 
ing and the cool breath of the glens. The w^ater was an emerald 



240 Six and One Abroad 

mirror fringed around its rim with fluttering reflections and 
fish were smashing the fragile crust, while away up near the 
first bend a row boat was plying its oars like a butterfly in lazy 
flight. 

Let the reader now intensify whatever picture has been formed 
in his mind by this slight description and multiply the rapture 
as many times as he will — there is no danger of exaggeration. If 
I were a painter I think I would spend a year at Lake Como 
and reduce it to canvas if I could, and after I had drawn the 
outlines and had sunk the crystal basin between its enfolding 
hills and had tinted them with the delicate shades of color which 
make them bewitching and had lifted a canopy of blue over 
it all, I would then attempt to catch the smile of God Almighty 
in my brush and inlay the sky with His presence as its author, 
and all the way down from the throne of Heaven I would have 
the angels descending on filmy wings to this resort for a morning 
bath. On the River of Life beneath the ineffable shade of the 
trees there may be beauty spots where the redeemed lie down 
in green pastures and float out on their pinions in its pulsing 
zephyrs, but if so there is only one way to describe it so that 
mortals can understand its supernal delights and that is to say 
it is more splendid than Como. 

The orchestra struck up a tune and the mountains repeated it 
in resonant echoes. The gong sounded, the smoke rolled from 
the stack, the water rippled in concentric wavelets and ran away 
in widening arcs, and the placid view became a moving picture. 
The hills shifted position rapidly and revealed every charm they 
possessed — vine covered chateaus and cedar-set hamlets, sloping 
groves of olive, abrupt cliffs with strata of the intense colors of 
a spring dress pattern, aged castles and villages of white and 
pink and brown that glistened in the sunlight like jewels on the 
polychrome fabric of a dream. 

This lake might well be termed a river, for it has no basin 
save what the mountains give it grudgingly, its greatest width 
not being more than a mile, while it runs in a sinuous course 
through them for thirty or forty miles, I should guess, or maybe 
more. 

We parted with this lovely child of the mountains with regret 
but before bidding it adieu we followed the engine of a. little 



Threading the Alps 241 



iiiade-to-order train in a serpentine course up the mountain sid'^ 
and caught a final view of it from the high vantage points, the 
prettiest feature of the picture then being a steamer that plowed 
a furrow in the crystal field, slicing a mulch of radiant foam 
from the land-sides of its prow and leaving a long streamer of 
lace in its wake. 

The mountains at this point are not the giants they grow to 
be in Switzerland, still they are not pygmies by any means, for 
they wear wigs of snow the year round and occasionally don 
neckties of clouds. 

Lake Lugano, which differs from Como only as one star differs 
from another in glory, caught us in its lovely lap at the Swiss 
frontier where the train could proceed no farther, and delivered 
us amidst a spectacular display of scenery to the main-line rail- 
road some fifty miles above the point where we left it for the 
optional side-trip. 

There we caught up again the main thread of the journey 
and wormed and punched a passage through the Alps, being 
inside fully as much as outside. Tunnels were so numerous they 
constituted more than half the distance between Lugano and 
Lucerne, one half the remainder being bridges and trestling. 
Seven of the tunnels were spiral in form, all of them worth 
their displacement in gold to the railroad but aggravatingly 
ruinous to the view. Now you see it and now you don't. 
Ravishing scenery alternated with plutonian darkness. The 
sound of the train was like the rasping whang of a planing mill 
when over the sounding boards of the bridges and like the roar 
of megalophanous devils in the tunnels. Then a heavy rain came 
and the rain and the mist on the car window all but concealed 
the intermittent view. The streams turned yellow and raced 
vociferously along narrow chasms, and a multitude of rills born 
of the freshet ran down from high up on the mountains like 
cream-colored reptiles till they came unexpectedly to the edge 
of a cliff, where, rather than undertake the desperate leap they 
vanished in puffs of vapor. 

Then St. Gotthard's Tunnel and a total eclipse of thirty 
minutes' duration, and after the exit dense overhanging clouds, 
the dim hodge-podge of tremendous mountains, and quickly the 
darkness of clouds and night. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

Some Hotel Difficulties. 

At Lucerne a flunky in uniform ran out from the brightly- 
lighted veranda of the Zweizerhoff and opened the omnibus in 
which I happened to be the only passenger. Off went the cap 
of this obedient and obliging messenger, and down went his 
head in abject graciousness, and out shot his hand for my grip, 
and hastily hence bounded his legs. The door of the famous 
old hotel opened mysteriously as if in automatic welcome. In- 
side, gilded chandeliers blossomed out of radiant ceilings, and 
in the midst of a mirror-plated forest of porphyry, women in ele- 
gant dress sat upon sumptuous divans and aristocrats came and 
went with valets at their heels. Coming suddenly upon such 
magnificence I was overwhelmed for the moment, and my hesi- 
tation was the signal for a drove of flunkies to fly at me, and 
with one at each arm, a half dozen in front leading the way 
and a crew of them bringing up the rear, I drifted in a dazed 
condition to a bald-headed official in a corner where a lot of 
ledgers occupied a safe. Not a word had I spoken until then, 
and then I said something, goodness knows what. I only know 
that the dignified gentleman with the bald head and a pen be- 
hind his ear could not understand. A moment of confusion and 
then a word to the flunkies, scattered them into a wild run 
which in a short time developed the presence of a tall man whose 
curled moustache and goatee unmistakably proclaimed him of 
French derivation. He could "speak-a-de English," and the 
rest was easy. 

Delivered to the tender mercies of an attendant who led the 
way with much obsequiousness and servility to the only '4ift" 
in Switzerland, all the flunkies who had chaperoned my entry 
into the hotel or performed the least insignificant service inside 
called out in chorus: ''Good night, sir." 

In all European hotels "good night" or "good bye" means 
"you haven't forgotten me, have you, sir?" 

The day, beginning with the cathedral in Milan had been 



Some Hotel Difficulties 243 



strenuous, about as full as any day could be of incident and 
scene, and I was a tired traveler. A bed was a welcome resort 
and I hurried to its consolation. But in Switzerland, it seems, 
beds are peculiarly equipped, as I learned when ready to turn 
in for the night. The Zweizerhoff variety was encumbered with 
a queer eider-down concern that appeared to be, as nearly as I 
could make out, half mattress and half balloon. It was not long 
enough for a mattress and not spherical enough for a balloon. But 
whether mattress or balloon what use could either be to me? I 
proceeded to dump the thing off the bed and lo, there was no cover, 
and it was cold enough for several quilts and a blanket or two. 
Calling a porter I directed his attention to the mystery on the 
floor and to the naked condition of the bed. The porter tried 
to explain by numerous gestures and unintelligible words, but 
failed utterly. Disappearing, he came again quickly, this time 
in triumph with the Frenchman of the goatee and curled mous- 
tache, and that linguistic encyclopedia explained that I was ex- 
pected to cover with the absurdity. "Nice feathers; keep 
warm," was the reassuring appendix to his explanation. 

"Good nighty sir," quoth the Frenchman. 

"Goodnight, sir," echoed the blonde attendant. 

"Good night, you beggars," and I closed the door and my 
purse. 

Very well, if such was the custom in Switzerland, I would 
not run counter to it, and I turned in and drew the fluffy 
voluminous mass over my tired body. But the thing didn't fit; 
it was too short. If I pushed it down over my feet my chest 
and entire upper structure was exposed, and vice versa, which 
was worse. It was entirely too hot and novel anyhow and I dis- 
missed it with a peremptory kick to the floor, and curling up 
under both sheets and my overcoat was soon oblivious to all 
the difficulties of cover in Switzerland's great scenic resort. 



244 



Six and One Abroad 




CHAPTER XXIX. 

Lucerne and its Environs. 

If Switzerland were in Texas, Texas would put Switzerland 
in Texas' vest pocket. If the little republic were in Pennsyl- 
vania, that state would bore its mountains full of holes. If it 
were in Colorado, America would make a goat ranch and a min- 
ing camp out of Colorado and a pleasure resort of its new acquisi- 
tion. The Alps are higher than the Rockies and are riven and 
torn and carved and twisted into more different kinds of sublime 
decorations and poses, while the whole magnificent negligee is 
striped with foaming streams that ply the depressions and wrap 
the rocks and frazzle their own finality into puffs of mist that 
befog the landscape and spray the vegetation. Every vale is 
traversed with a lively stream, and, more glorious than any 
charm Colorado has, numerous lakes are disposed here and there 
by a careful Providence to the best advantage — the antitheses of 
the towering teats of stone, and the epitome of loveliness and of 
subdued and satisfying grandeur. Add to all this the glaciers 
that slide in broad acres of ice down the gaps of the mountains 
at the terrific rate of half an inch or more a year, and the un- 
changing fashion of the Alpine tribe in wearing forever upon 
their heads tarbooshes of the whitest snow. Then put the finish- 
ing touch of w^hite and red colored towns upon every lake and 
lakelet and dot the mountain sides with queer romantic chalets, 
and listen to the tinkle of bells that shower down the declivities 
from herds of cattle that browse on the shrubbery of dangerous 
pastures. And when the eye has been filled to satiety with the 
splendid picture, and the ear has grown used to the music of the 
hills, then spread a rich blue sky over the scene as the last and 
only needed scheme to perfect the plan of entrancing beauty. 
That's Switzerland. Is it any wonder it is the playground of 
Europe. Come, Pleasure, and romp unfettered in this elysium. 
Come, Music and Poetry and Song, and tune your lyres to the 
dactyls of the swells and dips of the mountains where every 
surpassing scene is shot with inspiration for anthem or heroic 



246 



Six and One Abroad 




Lucerne (uid Its Environs 247 



story or thrilling melody. Come, ye of all the earth who are 
weary of the stress of life and heavy-laden with its burdens, 
and find rest in this resort where whirring wheels are barred 
and Nature has composed her harmonies into Rest and Recrea- 
tion. 

There are lots of things to see and enjoy at Lucerne. If you 
have only a day to devote to that particular spot of Switzerland, 
shape your day's programme after this wise: Before breakfast 
stroll around to where a mountain rises out of the backyard 
of the city and see the Lion dying, pathetically dying, in a bed 
in the rock, and you will see the greatest product of the chisel 
since the world began. After breakfast you might thread the 
zig-zag course of the covered bridge over the lake ; or watch the 
fish in the grainy transparence of the Ruess as it runs away 
with the output of the lake; buy a five dollar watch imbedded 
in a leather bracelet ; and take time for a stroll into the country 
where the scenery is always glad to have your compliments and 
where farm houses wear suspenders in their gables, and you 
might possibly see a dog and a bullock plowing a duet in a little- 
baby field, and other unique sights. In the afternoon, if you: 
be sentimental or foolish, and the chances are you will be both, 
climb a mountain; and at night lie about it and say you en- 
joyed it. 

But wherever you go or whatever you do, beware of, be cer- 
tain to avoid, entangling alliance with Swiss cheese; don't asso- 
ciate with it; its character is unsavory; it is undoubtedly post- 
mortem. In the beginning the Creator gave us a nose and en- 
dowed it with the special faculty of discrimination. I know the 
nose becomes seared at times like the conscience; becomes blase 
as it were, and callous and useless. My own is not of the degen- 
erate variety; it has never yet deceived me; and so, when I sat 
down to a meal in a Lucerne cafe and that little monitor passed 
judgment on the cheese and said it was spoiled I believed it. 
Did you ever eat any Swiss cheese? If you did, you ate it over 
the protest and supplication of your stomach's best friend. I 
do not wonder that the Swiss are so strong in battle ; they ought 
to be able to whip the civilized world with no other ammunition 
than their cheese. 



248 Six and One Abroad 

And no consideration of hurry or preoccupation with other 
matters ought to prevent an intimate acquaintance with the St. 
Bernard dogs of the Swiss Alps. They are on the streets of 
Lucerne, in the harness of milli-carts, or in the wake of children 
at play ; pat their shaggy coats and look into their benignant 
eyes; those great specimens, the finest in the world, of distin- 
guished carriage and kindly feature, so intelligent and reliable. 
Every one of them is a hero and not a sorry coward among 
them. Providence gave them to the Alps and clothed them with 
heavy suits of down for an important duty — the Red Cross serv- 
ice of the mountains. A few years ago, I have forgotten the 
number, Barry, one of the noblest of this tribe of St. Bernards, 
with a record of forty lives saved by his efforts alone, was sent 
out one day by the monks of a mountain hospice on his regular 
round of duties. That night Barry failed to return to the 
hospice and the monks were alarmed for his safety. The next 
morning they went in search of him, fearing some mishap and 
yet hoping that he had found a victim of the cold, and being un- 
able to lift him upon his back by his teeth had remained faith- 
fully by his side. 

Is it any wonder that when they came upon his body cold in 
death they wept as only those can weep who have lost a faithful 
and devoted friend? By the side of the dead form of the noble 
animal a knife was found and a blood stain on the snow and 
on the gray coat of the dog where it ran from his precious heart. 
Near by almost concealed in the snow was the frozen body of a 
man. 

It was easy to put these circumstances together into the tragic 
story which they indicated. Barry had found the man half 
frozen and had aroused him to offer the succor of food which 
he carried around his neck and the strength of his great back 
for transportation to the warm rooms of the hospice. The poor 
man in his stupor and delirium mistook his savior for a bandit 
and plunged his knife into the dog 's heart. 

They buried Barry high up in the Alps where his services to 
humanity had been so pronounced and next to the pure skies 
that will forever receive the incense of his noble life. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

A Boat Ride on the Bhine. 

At Lucerne I connected again with the company of sky pilots 
from whom I had become separated at Rome and I was glad 
to join them again, for traveling alone is as joyless as it is selfish. 
They were a wholesome edifying company, the only objection 
to them being an unswervable inclination toward cathedrals and 
pictures. As Switzerland had neither cathedrals nor pictures, 
they were bored by so trite a matter as mountains and lakes, 
and hastened, it occurred to me, with un.seemly dispatch toward 
the next religious point on their program, which happened to 
be Worms. 

"Worms?" What occurred at Worms to entitle it to the 
honor of a stop in our journey?" I insurgently inquired. 

"You don't mean to say you never heard of Martin Luther 
at the Diet of Worms?" stormed the whole chorus of sky pilots 
in reply. 

"I mean to say that, no matter what diet Luther had at 
AA^orms, it is not sufficient provocation for a night's lay off 
there," wa.s my rejoinder, amid a clamor of derisive taunts. 

They were unchangeable, and stopped over at Worms — all 
but one. Dr. Stophlet, who continued with me to Mayence, where 
we spent the night between a couple of mattresses. 

Circumstances having conspired to make us two, one a 
preacher and the other a gentleman, the Paul and Barnabas of 
our party, we had the unspeakable pleasure of making out a 
day's program of our own without danger of veto by a brutal 
majority. We would run down to Bingen by rail, thence to 
Coblence by Rhine steamer and from there, by either rail or 
boat to suit our own free and untrammeled option, to Cologne 
where we would resume relations with the majority. 

Accordingly, the following morning, we secured "booking" 
at the local "booking office" for Bingen, and pending the ar- 
rival of the first train from the south, hastily reconnoitered our 
situation in the first German city that had the honor to harbor 



250 Six and One Abroad 

us parenthetically for a night. It was soldiers ; nothing un- 
usual but 'soldiers ; soldiers on foot and soldiers on horse, soldiers 
on the march and soldiers everywhere, and if other towns in 
Germany were as well supplied with soldiers as Mayence then 
the soldier was easily the striking national feature. They are 
fearfully built, are these units of the German army — stout, 
sturdy fellows that bode no good to any enemy they may tackle 
in war. I don't see how it would be possible for even our dash- 
ing American soldiers to stand up against an assault of such 
heavily muscled men, and I would advise Uncle Sam to train his 
men to shoot well and to run fast if ever they come in contact 
with a detachment of German infantry. Great was the differ- 
ence between the German soldier and the soldier of Italy whom 
we had seen so often in the Mediterranean boot. The latter was 
uniformed in the gayest colors and bedecked with the most 
gorgeous headgear — army fops in dress and of slender build; 
the German was the reverse type in every respect and one can 
whip a thousand Italians and two can put ten thousand to 
flight. France can never win her ambition to humiliate Ger- 
many in battle as long as conditions remain in a hundred miles 
of what they are now. Not even Napoleon at their head could 
make a dint in that mass of muscle and endurance in which 
Germany is fortified. 

The run to Bingen was an hour of pleasant association with 
the Rhine. This great stream had figured so much in the history 
and story of our reading that we had pictured it with a pellucid 
bosom. Not much '' pellucid" that brown stream just outside the 
car window; but its accessories of high hills for banks, its great 
width, its towns nestling so thick along its course, its craft of 
various denominations plowing cream furrows in its surface — 
these measured up to expectations and we declared it to be all 
that was ever claimed for it, one of the most picturesque streams 
in the world. 

Bingen of itself had little to offer in the way of attractions. 
Old McGuffey's Fifth Reader — recollection of its story of 
' ' Bingen, Fair Bingen on the Rhine ' ' — was responsible for its in- 
clusion in our repertoire of stops. Its extremely narrow streets 
needed no apology, for there was no other alternative for a town 



A Boat Ride on the Rhine 251 



that was about to slide head-tirst into the river. A bull yearling 
in the shafts of a cart was a slight curiosity. And in the ab- 
sence of anything else remarkable we found entertainment in 
the unusual length of the German words in the street signs. A 
German cannot show any partiality between the letters of the 
alphabet, and so he uses all of them in every word of an an- 
nouncement or title. This elongated specimen of German orthog- 
raphy hung in front of a museum, without mortar or coupling 
pin: 

' ' Alterthusslammlung. ' ' 

And this designated the office of a brown-stone quarry, with 
not a link in its anatomy. 

' ' Braunsteinbergwerke. ' ' 

A German spurns a vowel as he does a Frenchman, never 
using one of the hated things except for a solvent for his con- 
sonants; as the apothecary uses alcohol for his mixtures. 

In a tobacco shop we encountered a half-grown German word 
that we dispatched with some difficulty. It contained when 
dressed twenty-seven consonants and a button besides seventeen 
vowels and other things. It did not seem to be abnormally de- 
veloped and would no doubt have grown to extraordinary size 
had it survived to maturity. I have it mounted now in the 
museum of my diary of hit-and-miss curiosities collected on the 
wdng. Behold it : 

' ' Constantinopolitanischecededelachpfeifenkopf.'" 

The most remarkable thing about this remarkable specimen 
of the genus verbae is that it is not regarded as remarkable in 
Bingen. Really it is not as fierce as it looks, for an analysis 
develops the following innocent interpretation: "A pipe of 
Constantinople style with a bagpipe head." 

In the same tobacco shop we ran upon a large orthographic 
family, in procession as follows: 

' ' Achpfuuderhinterladungcanonmeerschaumcigarenspitze. ' ' 

Beginning at a point marked "A" and traveling thence in a 
straight course you cannot miss the way. Picked to pieces and 
strung on American hyphens this orthographic procession be- 
comes an inoffensive little wee-bit of cigar holder. Literally, 



252 Six and One Abroad 

' ' a-meerschaum-cigar-holder-with-the-design-of - an- eight - pound- 
breech-loading-cannon. ' ' 

Across the Rhine at Bingen in romantic isolation loomed an 
old castle, mantled with ivy by which its decrepitude was par- 
tially concealed and its ancient follies expressly forgiven. In 
order to reach it we pressed into service a home-made boat and 
navigated the river, pulling diagonally across the grain of the 
swift current. At the landing we negotiated with some difficulty 
the steep ascent of the bank, and by following a well-beaten 
path which led circuitously through a covey of vineyards we 
came, after a walk of several hundred yards, to the castle. It 
was untenanted save by a lone lizard that ran out from a crevice 
in the rocks and dilated its epiglottis in curiosity at our intru- 
sion, and a spider that rested in the center of a hem-stitched ham- 
mock it had woven and suspended in a corner. Imagination 
trumped up all kinds of visions of the cavaliers of feudalism, 
of masters and fiefs and the retinue of men who were fortified 
there and lived a wild, splendid life and fought with similar 
clans on the Rhine for pastime. 

Across the river Bingen showed up picturesquely, thickset on 
the hill and reaching from the water's edge quite to the top 
where the dominating feature was a magnificent residence, we 
surmised, that was evidently a castle of the old days rehabilitated 
and improved for some lord of latter day finance. A broad 
river ran through the hills to the right of Bingen and emptied 
its clear, rapid water into the muddy Rhine, doing its best to 
clarify the greater stream, but giving it up after reaching its 
center. 

To our left on the side of the river upon which we were stand- 
ing, the scene was an extended hillside like unto the palisades 
of the Hudson, covered as far as the eye disclosed with the 
beginnings of the year's vineyards, the ground cultivated in 
furrows parallel to the river and fairly bristling with pine 
sticks; a great monument of some kind surmounting the hill 
in its great elevation. If we had had time we would have solved 
the mystery of this monument, but as it was, that imposing shaft 
has only a line in our journal — just a monument on the hill. 
Perhaps it commemorated the death of a soldier who "lay dying 



A Boat Ride on the Bldne 253 

at Algiers," and as his life-blood flowed, thought of his "Bingen, 
Fair liingeii ou the Rhine." 

At haphazard conclusion we bought tickets for a steamboat 
ride to Coblence, and on the deck of the steamer when it hove 
to, whom should we see but the five preachers bound for Cologne. 
Reason : There was a cathedral at Cologne. 

Our part of the water ride — that of Paul and Barnabas — 
including stops, lasted three hours, and had it not been so pro- 
vokingly cold the experience would have been surpassingly de- 
lightful. Castle after castle was passed, every prominent ele- 
vation in the hilly banks being occupied by one of these 
picturesque ruins with its coronetted tower and flanking stone 
extension and invariably covered with green vines. On both 
sides the banks were steep, but on the west they were partic- 
ularly precipitous, such inaccessible heights as would invite the 
knights of old to erect their aeries there. Occasionally these 
castles appeared to have been modernized and to be occupied. 
Whenever on either hand there was the least bit of soil a vineyard 
was pitched, and on the east side where the hills were less formid- 
able, the vineyards in early spring green presented the appear- 
ance of numerous rectangle?, quadrangles and rhomboids, being 
laid out evidently after the design of geometric figures, the 
owner having an eye to the beautiful as well as the useful. It 
did not seem possible that there was room for a town anywhere, 
but now and then one managed to hang on to a hill, the houses 
having to scrootch up close to make room for each other. Streets 
were unthinkable, for they were impossible. The houses were 
invariably three stories high and rarely over ten feet wide and 
were joined together in long rows, some exceedingly slender, oth- 
ers stouter, and with their similarity of stone, architecture, and 
roofs of glistening slate, they had a soldierly bearing and atti- 
tude as if at attention and toeing a mark just out of reach of 
the lapping water. 

Occasionally women were washing by the water's edge, their 
plump, weather-boarded bodies rising and falling as they rub- 
bed. A rolled oats sign in plain English letters pre-empted a 
space on the highest point to be found anywhere along the course 
of the Rhine in this loealitv. The discovery of this, the first 



254 Six and One Abroad 

English or American feature connected even remotely with any- 
thing German that we had seen, brought the whole company of 
preachers and gentleman to the top deck of the boat where they 
celebrated the evidence of American enterprise with vociferous 
cheers. 

A railroad ran in doable tracks on each side of the river, 
between the precipitous bank and the water where it could, 
and boring through what it could not surround. Every few 
minutes a train went whizzing by with a white banner of smoke 
flying from the engine, and the short, dumpy cars following like 
so many joints of a serpent on legs. The engine never failed to 
whistle before entering a tunnel as a boy yells before he leaps 
into a pool, and it was funny to watch the whole train gradually 
lose itself in the dark hole, crawling in like a thing of life and 
leaving only a bit of smoke curling out from the perforation as 
if it were coiled up inside and the smoke was its breath. But 
it was only for an instant that it was silent inside, for the tunnel 
was always short, and out again it would come on rolling feet 
and flying its flag of white and always screaming with wild de- 
light. 

And so the beautiful alternated with the singular. The pretty 
stream ran in a brown belt between parallel rows of hills, and 
the hills were grey with terraces or green with young vines or 
bristling most often with quintillions of white sticks, or some- 
times boldly exhibiting their primeval nakedness of stone, their 
shoulders and breasts tattooed by corroding rills, or carved into 
fantastic designs of strata or riven and shattered into heaps of 
grand disorder. The air w^as cold and biting, the clouds began 
to send down a drizzle, and a thunder clap brought a heavy rain 
that ran us indoors and down to the boiler room where we hugged 
the warmest thing we could find till the bell rang for Coblence. 

Paul and Barnabas, disembarked here while the cathedral 
hunters extended hypocritical regrets at our exit in the rain and 
continued with the boat to Cologne. But we will beat them into 
Cologne yet. 

At the gang plank we were held up for a pfennig for the 
carriage of our hand satchels on the boat, and a little later when 
we had bustled into a queer street car with a trolley like a barrel 
hoop the same baggage was again impressed for a pfennig. 



A Boat liide on the Rhine 255 

In the meantime it was not Coblence that was our host, but 
Coblenz, the termination "ce" being too Frenchy for Deutsch- 
land. Neither is there any Cologne; it is bluntly Koln and is 
pronounced Kull. 

Again the substantial character of everything German was 
apparent — the immense buildings, not high but heavily con- 
structed — the great cement paving blocks, the absence of brick 
and the presence of powerful individual stone blocks in all 
buildings, the robust citizenship, the cleanly character of the 
streets and stores. And most impressive of all, the serious visage 
of the people. They looked mad, almost fierce, as well as de- 
termined. The women were red-faced, light-haired, square- 
built well arranged physically for the motherhood of such a 
splendid race of men. But hip, hip, hip — yonder comes the 
inevitable squad of soldiers, the rain now somewhat abated, not 
deterring them. What powerful specimens ! The ground seems 
to tremble under their feet. Yonder is an entire regiment cross- 
ing a bridge ; without fanfare or display of music, just a mass 
of moving muscle and grit. Surely Germany is a military engine 
throbbing with the blood of millions of citizen soldiery. 

Up to this point in our travels we had tried every kind and 
classification of railroad travel in Europe except fourth-class 
in Germany. Determined to have this experience we bought 
fourth-class tickets at Coblence for Cologne, paying the equiva- 
lent of forty-seven cents for fifty-three miles. Coblence was 
evidently an important railroad city for at the station trains 
came and went almost as frequently as hobby-horses on a merry- 
go-round. Of course, because of government ownership, there 
was but one station in the iovm.. Now a train of sumptuous 
first-class coaches with polished sides and plate-glass doors and 
windows and immaculate porters, dashed in and came to a 
pompous stop, the engine panting but a moment while silks and 
beavers got ofP and beavers and silks and pug dogs got on. A 
little later a mixed procession of carriages, perhaps of different 
colors, came worming in and unbottled its mixture in the train 
sheds. It was a constant off and on scene, a rush of cars and 
people, affording the best opportunity we had had up to that 
time of studying German manners and customs. 

German stations have compartments for the different classes 



256 Six and One Abroad 

of travel, and the classes are not supposed to mix, but at the 
risk of committing lese majeste or some other offense we in- 
vaded every precinct of that depot, inspecting even Countess 
Uglymugsky on her luxurious divan in Class I, and the un- 
laundered ditch digger in the midst of his unpolished environ- 
ment in Class IV, all the while having in our pockets the lowest 
priced tickets that could be bought at the "booking-office." 

The fourth-class car in which we took passage was different 
from any we had seen in Europe. Wider than usual and some 
fifteen feet long, the seats were against the walls, leaving much 
open space for standing room. The passengers were chiefly 
laboring men and it was the time of day when this class was 
quitting work and flocking to the cars and trains. A stop was 
made at every cluster of houses, almost at every road crossing, 
discharging almost the whole of the car at each stop and taking 
on a fresh installment. At times we were jammed to the suffo- 
cation point, over half the contents of the car hanging on to 
ceiling straps. A legerdemain performer got on at one of the 
numerous stops and entertained with simple now-you-see-it-and- 
now-you-don 't feats, barely having time to take up a collection 
and get off at the next station. 

Reaching Cologne an hour ahead of the cathedral hunters, 
we had the unspeakable pleasure of seeing them come into the 
hotel soaked to the skin and as hungry as a Diet of Worms could 
make them. 

Thus ended a day on the grand old stream which is little less 
famous than the great empire itself which it traverses so 
splendidly, a day of incidents and accidents and overflowing with 
interest. We are accustomed to boast of our own Hudson whose 
emerald floods hurry along an unusually spectacular channel 
from the Adirondacks to the sea ; of the Columbia which battles 
for a hundred miles with the mountains and forces them to com- 
promise in a crystal course through winding, scenic valleys ; 
of the old reliable Mississippi, muddy and majestic ; and of the 
Nile, serpentine and sluggish, creeping upon a strip of green 
through the desert ; but the Rhine surpasses them all in stately 
grandeur, in long continued and diversified beauty, in quaint- 
ness of environment, and in that strange charm with which ro- 
mance and history have invested the old castles which crown its 
banks. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

The Cathedral of Cologne. 

According to the cathedral hunters, Cologne was a great city 
of the western part of the German empire that consisted of a 
cathedral and other things. As far as I knew or really cared, it 
did. The cathedral appeared to be by odds the biggest thing in 
town, and I meekly agreed to go along with the preachers to it 
because I had nowhere else to go. But I demurred and rebelled 
at the threshold, and while they went in and were knee-deep in 
artificial gloom I remained on the outside over my head in God 's 
blessed daylight. And I got the best view, too, of the cathedral 
itself. Two towers lifted their fretted outlines 528 feet, perfect 
twins in all respects, though too massive for the best effect and 
out of proportion to the rest of the building as though they 
sought to control the admiration of the eye to the manifest 
humiliation of the lesser accessories that clung humbly to their 
skirts. 

But when the e.ye gets provoked at the vanity of these tower 
twins and falls upon the graceful roof and carved and buttressed 
walls, it will be rewarded with a feast of optical dessert the 
like of w^hich is not to be found anywhere else in the world ex- 
cept in better assortment at ]\Iilan. A shower of spires seem to 
have fallen on the roof and to have stuck securely where they 
fell. Statues of saints are sown broadcast on the parapets and 
litter the spires at every available place, full grown men of 
marble who dwindle into children in their nighties to the be- 
holder on the pavement. And the whole immense pile is over- 
spread with ginger-bread work as though each stone had been 
shredded wdth a scroll saw- — the elaborate dream of an artist 
frozen into needle work and exquisite embroideries. 

The cathedral is smutty with the grime of age and the breath 
of engines exhaled upon it from the railroad station in its 
shadow, and it would be prettier if the janitor would shine up 
its saints occasionally and brush its embroidery. 

Now, in the matter of churches, I am not so unregenerate as 



258 Six and One Abroad 

to want to avoid them per se ; it is the perpetuality of the thing 
that is objectionable, and the despondency they exude at every 
pore. I mean in the old part of the old world, Cologne in- 
cluded. When I want to see something solemn I prefer a grave- 
yard or a funeral or a piece of Swiss cheese ; not something in 
the name of religion. 

However, the preachers had something up their sleeves along 
this line that promised a rare diversion, and I am glad I followed 
them into the Church of Ursula at Cologne, for I saw them 
there in ecstatic enjoyment of one of the most melancholy 
spectacles that could be devised by the arts of man. 

In the dark ages, the story goes, a beautiful English girl 
bearing the euphonious name of Ursula conceived the notion 
of organizing a crusade of girls and of marching to the Holy 
Land to assist in the enthusiastic campaign then in vogue to 
rescue the grave of Christ from the Moslems. Six thousand 
beautiful girls enlisted under the banner of Ursula. But alack 
and alas, upon reaching that portion of Europe where Cologne 
is now located they were attacked by the infidels and massacred 
to the last foolish and helpless girl. 

On the holy ground where the massacre occurred this church 
was soon thereafter erected, and the bones of the ill-starred 
feminine army collected for interment in it ; indeed the walls 
were made hollow so that they might be filled with the bones, 
the ground inclosed by the walls not affording sufficient space. 

Oh, yes, we bought a bottle of cologne at Cologne; it was the 
last thing we did before we left Cologne for the Holland frontier. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

Windmills and Petticoats. 

Two countries boast of leading the world in the production 
of milk and butter, estimated per capita of their population. I 
shall not attempt to arbitrate the contention between these coun- 
tries but cannot do less than give endorsement to their preten- 
tions along this line. Strange enough the two rivals happen to 
be among the very smallest of the European family. Switzerland 
has its Alps and its cows. Holland has its canals and its cows. 
In both cases the cows are worth more to the people than any 
other asset. If Holland were a hot batter cake, the butter that 
Holland makes in any single day would easily be sufficient to 
spread over it and run off the sides. The cheese that is pressed 
from the milk diurnally, shaped into a golden cone, would be a 
solid Eiffel Tower. The music of the streams that fall from the 
udders of a hundred thousand cows into a hundred thousand 
piggens, if gathered into a single overture would fuse into a 
melody that would thunder into the ears of England. 

The pided Holstein cow was the first live object to cross our 
vision after we had crossed the Holland frontier, even preceding 
the ubiquitous windmill. The landscape was a perfectly level 
meadow with tailor-made trees arranged in soldierly parallels 
with club-footed, warty tops. Now trees do not concern us much 
in America — the woods here are full of trees — but in Europe the 
woods have no trees in them ; they have all long since vanished, 
except in parks and a few other places where the government 
has reserved a preserve or so for hunting spots for the king and 
nobility. Such is the ease all over the face of Europe unless the 
parts we did not visit differ from the parts we did traverse. I 
am speaking now of the original forests which Nature grew. 
They are gone. But the people of Europe have hit upon a 
scheme of planting timber as we in this country plant orchards, 
and in Germany, Italy, France, Holland and other countries, 
there are orchards after orchards of trees that are being grown 
for no other purpose than fuel. 



260 Six and One Abroad 



The rural Dutch home is usually a meadow of about twenty 
acres circumscribed by these tailor-made trees in lieu of fences, 
and dominated by a big roofed house that is stubbornly unlike 
any other house in the world. It is sometimes built of wood, is 
this Hollander's home, sometimes of thatch, walls, roof and all; 
and what peculiar roofs ! Reaching to within a few feet of the 
ground, these coverings rise with a great sweep over maybe as 
many as three stories of rooms and floors, making whatever 
bends are necessary to include them all. 

■The Dutchman's economy is proverbial, and the frugality of 
the peasant would not allow a separate barn for the cows or 
horses, and these animals are provided for under the common 
home roof. But put a period here — the animals' quarters are 
scrupulously clean. The Dutchman and his wife and his child 
and his manservant and his maidservant, and his cow and horse 
are all clean, and his premises are clean and his meadows are 
tastefully shorn and everything he touches or comes in contact 
with is gloriously tid3^ I had thought the Germans were the 
tidiest people in the world, but they don't beat the Dutch. 

The unvarying links of meadows and of tree-checked expanse 
continued as we progressed toward the heart of this midget 
country, and only one town of considerable size interrupted the 
run. Holstein cattle continued to browse on the brown stubble 
of the baby plantations or chewed their cuds in the shade of 
the fence hedges. Most of the people we saw from the train 
window were dressed provokingly like anybody else, but oc- 
casionally a peasant appeared in the view in wooden shoes, and 
baggy trousers that looped a wide curve from waist to ankle and 
navigated his rear like a dirigible balloon, in short waistcoat and 
a cap and the invariable pipe that goes with every masculine 
costume, modern or mediaeval. The women wore a superfluity 
of dress that stood out as if reinforced with hoops — we wondered 
and wondered whether the tremendous latitude of the Dutch 
women was real or affected, whether it was hoops or padding or 
the genuine article — and the quaintest, cutest white-winged 
grandma caps. Children, swathed in attire to match the parental 
styles, walked or ran in wooden canoes. I longed, to get out and 
insert a quill in one of these boys' pants and blow him up just 
to see what would happen. 



Wind))iills and Petticoats 261 

Wiiidniills were lazily turning handsprings on the tops of low 
chunky towers ])roniiseiiou.sly hither and yon, and there was 
but one feature lacking in the range of sight to make up a typi- 
cal Holland scene. Where were the canals? Were they fea- 
tures of the cities only or of the country as well as the city? 

Across the meadows we presently descried a mysterious white 
sail moving slowly through the stubble like a butterfly of un- 
usual size feeling its way among the flowers of the brown floor. 
It was not long before we were crossing canals almost every 
minute by the watch and right and left white wings were gliding 
through the grass, not so mysteriously as the first one that put 
us to guessing but just as interestingly. 

Then, Amsterdam, with its streets half water and half pre- 
cious soil. 

Amsterdam has been called the Venice of the North, but the 
dual character of the streets and the abundance of great trees 
that adorn them play havoc with the comparison. The quaint 
Venetian gondola with swan-like neck and color of coffin and 
graceful profile has no second habitat in the waters of Amster- 
dam. The grimy barge and the puffing launch of the latter 's 
canals are as unlike the Venetian craft as the Dutchman is un- 
like the Italian. In the one his business is his pleasure ; in the 
other his pleasure is his business. 

The canal is Holland's defense against invasion by an enemy. 
In the year sixteen hundred and something the French at- 
tempted to chastise the plucky little country and invaded it for 
that purpose, but the dykes were cut and the enemy found him- 
self in the midst of a flooded and unnegotiable sw^amp, unable to 
move except by the grace of the amphibious Dutch who dictated 
their own terms of evacuation. Today there is a key kept con- 
cealed in the palace of royalty at Amsterdam wherewith at a mo- 
ment 's notice the entire country may be flooded, and no one 
but the trusted heads of the government know where it is nor 
where it may be applied to turn the waters in. Other nations 
have their Dreadnoughts ; Holland has its dam key. 

As is the case in Venice, a large number of Holland's popula- 
tion both of town and country live on the water; deaths take 
place there and many a funeral procession drifts mournfully 



262 Six and One Abroad 



to the terminal of the grave, on roads of water. The boat is 
handed down from father to son, and is usually the whole 
amount of legacy despite the proverbial shrewdness and fru- 
gality of the Dutch. A compulsory school law keeps the land 
children at books for nine months in the year; but the children 
of the canals are exempt by special provision, for they are con- 
stantly on the move and without fixed habitation. 

Up to a few years ago these barges were drawn by dogs that 
tugged at the ropes from the banks, but a law was passed for- 
bidding this practice under the plea of cruelty; curiously 
enough, however, the children, pitiful hybrids of the boat, took 
the places vacated by the dogs, and no legislation has inter- 
vened to protect them under the plea of cruelty. Even the 
women engage in this arduous and monotonous work, while the 
owner — big knot of a rascal that he is — not infrequently per- 
mits his wife and children to tug and sweat in the harness 
while he, under the guise of being compelled to manage the 
cargo, idles on the deck of the boat. A frequent sight is that 
of an old woman, her daughter, daughter-in-law and other chil- 
dren all bending to the rope, while daddy and son-in-law are 
smoking leisurely on the barge, the pullers and the pulled taking 
the situation as a matter of course. 

The women of Holland have queer ideas of dress though good- 
ness knows they could not invent any fashion that would be 
more ludicrous than those of our own women of America. I 
wondered with exceeding great wonder why and how all Dutch 
women managed to maintain such breadth of physical system 
while the men were as everywhere else, of the various builds and 
shapes. I located the reason ; no matter how ; but I found it to 
be simply and only a matter of petticoats. The voluminous 
petticoat habit is a national characteristic. There seems to be 
a general opinion that a woman is not properly dressed unless 
she have on from six to ten underskirts. They give rotundity to 
the body and breadth to the hips, and woman is admired in 
Holland for her latitude even as in America she is admired 
for her resemblance to a canvassed ham. I saw these women 
everywhere in country and town, wearing, sometimes wooden 



Windnn'lls and Petticoats 268 

shoes, frequently those ineffably funny lace caps, but always 
and forevermore a superabundance of petticoats. 

The Dutchman is alwaj^s pale, and if indeed at any time he 
shows any color it is invariably a splotch of vermillion on the 
cheek bone that has the appearance of having intruded upon 
a grave and serious* place where it has no business. His eye 
is usually blue and always sedate; excitement is as foreign to 
his constitution as hot water is to a cake of ice. 

But that nose ! 

The Gernuin has his crescendo moustache, the Frenchman his 
goatee, but the Dutchman has his nose. Without it his counte- 
nance Avould actually be dehorned. Rising somewhere in the 
space between where his eyes are set in quiet lakes of pale blue, 
this nose gushes forth full grown in its beginning. It does 
not, like other noses, issue gracefully and unostentatiously from 
the Itasca of his forehead, and then by easy stages find its way 
to its culmination over the gulf of his mouth. Neither does it 
describe anything like a graceful curve in tinishing its course 
and resuming union with the countenance. But after abruptly 
taking possession of the whole face and dominating it, winds 
up its contortions by disporting itself into a huge globule of 
crude caoutchouc that hangs threateningly over the mouth, reso- 
lutely refusing either to fall off as it ought to do, or to even 
come to rest and attain a fixed position. It is as if the Maker 
had j)layed a prank on these men of the Netherlands by pour- 
ing a mixture of something cartilagenous down their faces, and 
after permitting it to come to the proper consistency had hit it 
a blow to give it unusual and comical breadth and then dared 
them to blow it off' if they could. 

But however grotesque the Dutchman's nose may appear, it 
is nevertheless an indication of his character; conservative, 
adroit, studious, phlegmatic, presistent, stubborn. It is, more- 
over, a typical trader 's nose, a nose that he has poked into every- 
body 's business under the sun. The very traits that meta- 
morphosed a marsh into a water girt meadow and dammed the 
seas that were damning him have carried Dutch goods into all 
the world's markets. He is more thoroughly commercial than 
the Englishman and avarice is really the only national fault he 



264 Six and One Abroad 

has. His conservatism is born of a fear of losing and hence he 
will not venture into any undertaking where there is the least 
hazard or chance. He therefore poses in America, whence he 
has occasionally immigrated, as a money lender but rarely as a 
director in a project without fixed and assured dividends. 

When the Dutchman makes up his mind all the world backed 
by all its biggest guns cannot change his opinion. Practically 
without religious belief at the time Luther broke with Rome, 
he hastened to accept Luther's heresies and henceforth Holland 
became the hotbed of protestantiism in Europe. Philip of 
Spain, the most cruel ruler who ever bloodied the pages of his- 
tory, and the Duke of Alva, a brute a hundred times more brutal 
than Philip, tried to subdue Dutch protestantism with fire and 
the gibbet. From every tree in the Netherlands these Dutchmen 
were swung, so thick that there was not room to crowd another ; 
the fires of crudest oppression turned their bodies into cinders ; 
but their spirit was untouched and their temper only increased 
in its unchangeable bent. "Who can blame those poor oppressed 
people for carrying with them out of the fires of Catholic Philip 
a hatred of his religion? The rarest thing on earth today is a 
Catholic Dutchman. As I looked upon the cold, unresponsive 
features of these people of the North I admired them for the 
most glorious example of persevering pluck on record, and I 
thought of the splendid addendum to this example furnished 
by the hardy Boers in South Africa against impossible odds. 

The air swings heavily over the lowlands of Holland and 
when it is not precipitated in downpours of rain it is congealed 
in fogs that wrap the hives of busy bees in a cold cloak that de- 
nies them the sun that might otherwise shine installments of 
cheer into their souls. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

Seeing a Dutcli City Before Breakfast. 

On Friday afternoon, being the same afternoon tliat they 
arrived in Amsterdam and four hours after their arrival, a 
called meeting of the six preachers and the one gentleman 
was held on the banks of the bankless Zuyder Zee, and a reso- 
lution was offered in open meeting proposing that they should 
constitute themselves a flying squadron and leave at once 
for the south, stopping for the night at The Hague and reach- 
ing Paris Saturday night, the casus fugae being that Sunday 
threatened to happen directly after Saturday, and Sunday 
always being quarantine day with the preachers it would be 
very bad to have to spend it anywhere outside of Paris. 
Motion carried by a vote of six to one. 
In pursuance whereof, the odds and ends of observation in 
Amsterdam were hurriedly gathered up and the dash for The 
Hague (spelled Der Haag and pronounced Der Hog) under- 
taken. 

Leaving in the glow of a sun that was hastening to the 
horizon, the fugitives in their flight negotiated a seemingly 
limitless network of canals that plied the level plain. 

There is no waste land in Holland and nothing else that goes 
to waste; even the mud is harvested and treated and sold 
under the name of peat. Some of these days we Americans 
will learn how to be economical and frugal, but before we do- 
we will first have to learn that we are the most extrava- 
gant, the most improvident and Wasteful people under the 
sun. Europe lives on half of what we throw away; half of 
our waste would make a Dutchman rich. 

And so, in this little spin of an hour or so across the nation 
of Holland everything bespoke the native thrift, the conserva- 
tion of resources and space. Little towns strung the road like 
beads — towns riven by narrow streets and teeming with busy 
population. Slow-turning windmills extracted water from the 



266 Six and One Abroad 

ditches aad not one was groaning over its duties monoto- 
nously done. 

The sun set and the long twilight of the northern clime be- 
gan. It was then, that having tired of the scenery which was 
but a repetition of itself, the fugitives were treated to some- 
thing entirely new in the way of car window entertainment. 
First on the left and presently on the right, patches of bril- 
liant hyacinths appeared, which were admired without sus- 
pecting they were the beginning of a panorama of color that 
would unroll before the windows of the car for a solid hour. 
An hour of flying flowers. Arranged in square plats, each 
plat constituted of flowers of one single color, and in no case 
two similar colored squares adjoining, red, yellow, blue, white, 
the change from the commercial and the unique to the beauti- 
ful and the aesthetic was sudden and remarkable. The train 
sped on, unrolling without a break, except where a burg in- 
terrupted, its bands of assorted colors — a swift flying band 
on either side. 

Slowly fell the shades of night. Fast and faster flew the 
train. Unceasing rolled the color splashed ribbons of hya- 
cinths. At last the night dropped its sable cloak over the 
hurrying strips, and the fugitives never knew how far the 
colors ran under it to their termination — perhaps to the very 
suburbs of The Hague. 

That night in the quiet precincts of a closed room while 
five of the parsons w^ere reading up on the French Revolution 
and other such dead res adjudicata, one of the majority fell 
from grace and entered into a plot with the minority. The 
plot was to see The Hague in spite of the steam roller resolu- 
tions aforesaid which provided for departure from The Hague 
at 8 :30 Saturday morning. The Gunpowder Plot was not 
more radical or revolutionary or more secretly guarded. And 
no plot was ever more successfully executed — swiftly, violent- 
ly and effectively executed. 

The next morning, three hours before the inexorable hour 
of departure, the minority, temporarily increased to two as 
stated, issued from the Hotel Der Haag and were off in a 
flash. Never did Dan Patch cover ground with greater celer- 



Seeing a Dutch Citij Before Breakfast 267 



ity, unless he happened to go faster than they did in the fogs 
of that April a. m. in The Hague. 

Only two classes of the population were in circulation at 
that early hour, the milk man and his push cart and the flower 
vender and his push cart. And so it was milk and flowers that 
were encountered always during our stay in that quaint little 
vest pocket of a country; at break of day, all day long, and 
at nightfall. 

Umbrageous, restful, kindly trees in uniform dress on every 
street welcomed the early adventure with a slight shuffling 
of their foliage. Where the wealthiest citizens lived, backed 
against the curb the hyacinth seller had his cart, a cart 
full of big yelloAv flowers whose magnitude and tenderness 
more than once came near bringing the procession to a halt 
of admiration. Rounding into a park where commerce, for- 
bidden to trespass, looked on in frowning brick on four sides, 
where the fogs trailed in filmy veils through the leaves and a 
canal held its long panel mirror to the trees, and geometric 
walks marked off plats of grass, where the ivy leaned upon 
tine lofty trunks and twined its arms among the branches, and 
the dew drops jeweled the whole semi- Arctic scene with dia- 
monds made in the night, there the flying minority would 
fain have tarried and drawn a draft against the bank of this 
treasure, but from the iron necessity the throttle was kept 
open and the race continued through the little paradise with 
no slackening of speed. 

The dough-y face of the omnipresent hyacinth huckster took 
on a ruffle of amusement at the unusual dash. The scenery 
revolved in evolutions of color; perspective and design joined 
in the scenic confusion. The Peace Conference building, even 
declined to stop in its backward race with the scenery to al- 
low time for inspection. Practically the whole town, packed 
into a conveniently condensed area for such rapid-fire jaunts 
fell before the invincible dash ; every building, street and alley ; 
every early riser in cap and smoking at the mouth through 
the chimney of a pipe; every padded woman who rushed to 
the door or invaded the front premises to view the galloping 
foreigners; every insinuating canal; all, all were theirs in 



268 Sir and One Abroad 

two hours from the time the radical enterprise was under- 
taken. 

And then, having subdued the city, why not take an excur- 
sion into the suburbs for other views to conquer? Like a 
brace of six-cylindered comets they flew into another park, 
this one apparently too large for their comprehension to 
comprehend or their capacity to compass. Giant trees, painted 
green by the fogs, reared their stately trunks till up in the 
neighborhood of the clouds they burst into sprays of foliage 
dank and dense. Streams, matted with roots, and limpid 
where the moss permitted any display of their charms, darted 
imder their swift feet beneath rustic bridges. Herds of deer 
ran hither and thither with antlers as big as Texas trees on 
their heads. Was there no boundary to this miscellaneous na- 
ture gallery? Surely they had encountered the biggest thing 
in a little land of little things. On and on they ventured, with 
faith and hope and nerve, until at length, out of wind, they 
emerged into the open light where the sun now risen was slinging 
broadsides of crimson upon the tops of buildings in a wing of 
the city that had hidden itself from their fugitive onslaught 
behind the trees of the park. 

It was too much. The supply of motive energy was getting 
low. This newly discovered section of The Hague must go un- 
traversed. The engine sputtered and the retreat began. The 
sun withdrew its light and low hanging clouds began to pelt the 
travelers' heads with admonitory nuggets as big as brick- 
bats, and as there was not in all The Hague such a convenience 
as an awning they were ingloriously bespattered. And what 
was worse, they were gloriously lost and that without compass 
or bearings or without ability to communicate their predica- 
ment or receive explanatory succor. With what additional 
tribulations they managed finally to effect their return to camp 
is a secret that will never be disclosed. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 
Moving Pictures. 

Promptly as per schedule, we took up the arduous scheme 
of a day's journey which was to terminate after many event- 
ful events in the world's fashion capital, the route traversing 
three countries of Europe — all compressed into one day, and 
including the wonderful dual hegira of the early morning. 
The spigot was wide open and the clouds poured out their 
contents in a deluge, cutting off observation through the car 
window ; evidently they had contained themselves for our ac- 
commodation while seeing Holland and now no longer able to 
hold in, had opened every faucet, knocked off the hoops and 
thrown away the staves. And so, if there is anything at all 
between The Hague and Rotterdam fciit perpendicular sheets 
of water we at least are not aware of it. Just thirty minutes 
was the time it took to make the run — had they known this 
other great city was so near, the minority would have in- 
eluded it in their ante-breakfast itinerary. The last syllable 
of Rotterdam being a scriptural word, even the preachers 
were disposed to stress it on the occasion of our wait there of 
thirty minutes, for the rain hemmed us in the station, and for- 
bade any excursion outside. 

The great ships, the mammoth piers and shipping houses ad- 
jacent, the wide streets and substantial business buildings, 
the hurrying clattering trucks, indicated that Rotterdam was 
one of the most important ports on the Atlantic or any of its 
arms. And so it is, say the books. 

Out of Rotterdam toward the south the scenery managed 
to show itself through the rain which by that time had 
frazzled into a drizzle. The first plowed ground we had seen in 
Holland alternated its brown occasionally with the saffron of 
the meadows; sloops with wide white sails glided between the 
fields; fat, spotted cows, protected by burlap, held their tails 
between their legs as they grazed ; a multitude of windmills 
were at re.st, their sails furled and the open lattice of their 



270 Six and One Abroad 

flies exposed ; tree farms varied the view ; jBne shell-paved roads, 
carved like seasoned hickory and as faultless and smooth as a 
maiden's powdered face, spun their skeins of exquisite length 
without a rise or dip as far as the vision reached ; peasants 
made their way to the market in carts drawn by dogs in har- 
ness, themselves in cap and pipe jogging up and down with 
the jerks of the vehicle. The train glided along its bed as 
smoothly as though on rubber wheels on a cement pavement 
and at length ran into a brushy section that had never been 
covered by the sea, and in the midst of this vegetation, off to 
the right half a mile, with no environment but this scrubby 
growth and a few peasants' homes in the vicinity, a great 
church reared its pile of stone and upon it sat a dome as big 
as St. Peter's, the top surmounted by a cross and a statue. 
Strange idea, this, of isolating such a costly church in such pe- 
culiar surroundings. But the explanation was this: That it is 
not unusual in Holland for different villages to unite in build- 
ing a church in a place accessible to all and which is large 
enough to accommodate several congregations of the protestant 
faith, and that services are held simultaneously in separate 
apartments of the church by different sects. The church is 
maintained and the ministers at the head of the sects are sup- 
ported out of a common fund contributed by all of them. How 
do you suppose that kind of a coalition would work in America? 
At the Belgian frontier let the Journal speak for itself — 
that brief and unerring chronicle of the movements of the 
"six and one" — to-wit : ''At the Belgian frontier an officer 
comes into our car; sizes up our crowd of six and one, and 
addresses the 'Doctor' (meaning Dr. Luccock, pastor of Oak 
Street Presbyterian church, Chicago, and who is our leader 
and spokesman, because, besides being the most accomplished 
scholar among us, he is also the most dignified and imposing in 
appearance). The officer employs his native tongue; the Dr. 
uses his own, and supposing the intruder to be merely a train- 
man wanting to know his destination, as is frequently the case 
in our journey, he promptly replies to the barbed interrogation 
by saying 'Brussells.' The officer shakes his head and cries out 
an impatient and athletic rejoinder. The Dr. reiterates, 'B-r-u-s- 



Moving Ficiures 271 

s-e-1-l-s, ' in drinvnont and emphasized syllables. The officer dis- 
gusted reachw for a grip under the Dr.'s feet, and the latter, 
supposing it to be a gentle reminder to remove it from the pas- 
sageway, lifts it into the rack overhead. Officer's suspicions 
aroused, seizes valise, and signs for a key, at the same time 
connnanding him to ' open ! ' in good English. A great light 
dawns upon the Dr. He has just discovered that he is negoti- 
ating with a revenue official, and becomes suavity personified. 
A hasty peep at the contents is sufficient — just a night shirt and 
a Bible — and the satchel is at once acquitted of all violations 
of law with the usual verdict in chalk." 

The topography of Belgium was rougher and more rolling 
than its neighbor, Holland. 

The old-style lever wells put in an unexpected appearance — 
the kind in vogue in the South befo' de wawh. Scrub timber — 
a mongrel of shinnery and briers — and low hills came to the 
relief of the monotony of level land. Once again as in Germany 
the railroad was lined with privet hedges on either side, and 
the peasants and workmen, such as ventured forth in the mist- 
ing rain, were shod with wooden canoes. Then the timber be- 
came civilized and got a haircut and arranged itself symmetri- 
cally, and suddenly a regiment of half grown stripling pines 
dashed on the scene and put the oaks to flight, themselves 
quickly retiring and leaving a clear field of little homes in little 
plats of green marked off into undulating rectangles. 

Belgium is about the littlest thing that ever happened, and 
yet boasts of being the most thickly settled event in the world. 
Except a strip on the north side, it literally swarms with hu- 
manity and is a crazy quilt of sward and houses, practically 
the whole of it a town. It is possible for a lady living on the 
line to pass a bit of gossip to her neighbor and for that one to 
hand it to her friends and pass it on without interruption clear 
across the country from house to house and never use the 
telephone. 

Pole wells are so numerous that they become a feature of the 
landscape like the windmills are in Holland; these and the 
wooden and antiquated single-handed plows indicate that civi- 
lization is tardy there. In the course of our journey Antwerp 



272 Six and One Abroad 

was reached and we were surprised — an old, old town, but big 
enough to be the second commercial port of this busy globe. 
New York leading it. 

And then, Brussels, the capital — they spell it Bruxelles. Beau- 
tiful city of shaded streets^ of silk factories and lace workers, 
of queer transportation facilities, of steep hills and long rows 
of houses climbing them. A bus marked in a strange language 
that we managed miraculously to interpret carried us to the 
South Station, from which our trip was to be projected to Paris. 
There we learned that we could take a train at 6 o'clock for 
the great French city and would have the entire afternoon to 
see Brussells and— what interested us far more than the Belgian 
capital — the battlefield of Waterloo. 

It was half past dinner time and the other six of us hastened 
to dispose of this necessity at an adjacent restaurant while I 
was detailed to procure tickets for the famous battlegrounds. 
A lady in black made her appearance at the ticket window, 
when she heard the word "Waterloo," and suggested in plain 
English that she was a resident of the place where Napoleon 
lost and that she would be glad to act as our chaperone. It was 
so sudden. A lady proposing — would I accept? I was all 
alone, unprotected, in the presence of a betwitching woman in 
black, in a strange country, and before I could collect my 
thoughts I voluntarily gasped "Yes." From that moment I 
was her property, no doubt of that. She followed me across 
the street into the restaurant, where my travel consorts were, 
and when I entered in company with this acquisition in skirts, 
I could see that they suspected that I had fallen into a trap 
in Which betwitching eyes were the trigger. Perhaps I was 
trying to inveigle them, too, into the same trap — a trap we 
had avoided, like Joseph, without a wobble thus far — but the 
smart little woman was the first to dissipate suspicion with the 
clever remark: "I found him and brought him back to you." 
Thereupon and thenceforth she unreeled a long story of herslf 
and her career. Born at AVaterloo twenty-five years ago she 
had lived there ever since; her husband was dead; he had con- 
ducted a curio store and hack line there ; she had taken up 
his business wT-iere his death had left it; she made visits every 



Moving Pictures 273 

day to Brussels, watched the ticket window and when fares to 
Waterloo were paid, she presented her card and solicited the 
privilege of transporting the person in a hack from the station 
to the grounds, serving as guide and offering to sell various 
mementoes and souvenirs of. the place. She spoke several lan- 
guages, naming English and American as two distinct tongues; 
was always glad to serve Americans — they were so generous and 
extravagant and rich. She knew every foot of the battle ground 
and would be glad to conduct us personally over it without any 
charge except the hack fee. 

Our tickets called for Braine I'Allend, distant fifteen miles 
from Brussels ; cost, two francs and a half for the round trip ; 
and submitting to the blandishments of the lady in black we 
became her guests. 

The city passed, the country assumed a hilly aspect and was 
combed with the plow to every incTi^ of its numerous domes, 
and was green with the heralds of spring. A stop was made 
every few minutes at a village where the business houses of 
brick, ten feet wide by forty tall, stood, some in curious com- 
panies as though to brace one another against a possible col- 
lapse, others, ostracised from the crowd, standing alone as if 
sliced from a block and set off to themselves to prevent friction 
in the family. The weather was lowering and threatening rain, 
suggestive of the natural cause of the defeat of Europe's great- 
est general — the torrential downpour of the night of June 18, 
1815, which delayed the attack next day and enabled Blucher 
to save the fight. 

History has no other such thrilling pages as those which 
Napoleon enlivened with his incomparable genius. No intellect 
from the creation till this hour was more brilliant than his, no 
other man has ever combined within himself such natural abil- 
ity and resourcefulness with such versatility of genius, and 
per'haps not till the end of time shall his equal be given to man- 
kind to rule or overrule as he may will. As superb in general- 
ship as Caesar, Hannibal or Alexander, he excelled them all in 
strategy and in colossal achievements, and as compared to Wel- 
lington in whose name he went to final defeat, he was as a 
mountain to a monument. He thrashed every country of Europe 



274 Six and One Abroad 

when it ran counter to his purpose, and would have admin- 
istered similar discipline to England had not God helped her 
out. He had no equal in sagacious capacity but God, and didn 't 
fear Him a whit. He was a miracle of glittering qualities— the 
world's greatest law-giver since Moses, a scholar of scholars, 
an orator of distinction, a philosopher whose aphorisms will 
live forever by the side of those of Socrates, a writer of trench- 
ant power, the chief of diplomats, a rare magnetic personality, 
"grand, gloomy and peculiar," riving the world as a thunder- 
bolt an oak, the vicegerent of destiny, the most marvelous 
prodigy of all history. 

With a smattering of this mighty man's deeds swarming in 
recollection, we followed the little woman in black to a hack 
in waiting, at Braine I'AUend, and were conveyed along a road 
that led between the houses of the little village, up a long hill- 
side till the top was reached. 

Behold, the battlefield of Waterloo. A panorama of green, 
a woodlet to the right, a ravine yonder where Providence drew 
its deadline against Napoleon's aggression, dug it deeper in 
the night and buried hds future in it next day, a white, red- 
topped chalet off to the left where Hugo drew inspiration for 
his matchless description of the battle in Les Miserables, and 
in the center of this historic field a great conical mound more 
than a hundred feet high with green clover sides and surmounted 
by a bronze lion representing the Belgian coat of arms. Our 
fair guide was a thrilling history of the great battle, graphic 
in her explanations of every detail of it, and under her eloquent 
description we could see the maneuvers of Wellington and Na- 
poleon, the last decisive dash of the Old Guard and the fatal 
plunge into the trap Providence had laid in the night, the 
fiuttering banners of Blucher, the fearful slaughter, the retreat, 
the rout, the conqueror conquered and moodily making his way 
to his loved and loving Paris — all indelibly, sublimely pictured 
in memory and fixed on the actual background where it oc- 
curred, and this picture is one of the most prized of all the 
pictures in the halls, of my memory. I intend to take it into 
eternity, and if I can find the immortal spirit of Napoleon 
anywhere on the outskirts of heaven 1 will beseech him to tell 



Moving Pictures 275 

the story anew, and shall expect the books of God to show this 
entry: "Napoleon Bonaparte, remarkably endowed by heaven, 
the Earth's most brilliant figure. Credit him with the greatest 
legal code and the lesson of his life which led to the people's 
rule in P^rance. Debit him with the slaughter of thousands and 
inordinate selfishness." 

In Switzerland we saw huge dogs harnessed to drays and 
milk wagons, shai'ing this service with yearlings. Holland dit- 
toed this peculiarity. But it remained for Belgium to surpass 
its midget sisters in this respect by harnessing a dog and a 
man, and sometimes for variety to make a team of a dog and 
a woman. A cart came down the street with a man between 
the shafts. The cart was loaded with garden truck and the 
man was crying out his cargo. "We had not noticed that the 
team was double until the vehicle came alongside our position 
in a post card shop. Then it developed that there was other 
motive power than the man in the lead. It had occurred to 
us t'hat he was drawing his load with very little apparent ef- 
fort ; now the cause was patent. A dog was harnessed under- 
neath the cart and was pulling with all his might, his outstand- 
ing tongue and pantings denoting that he was doing all the 
work while his colleague in the shafts was merely guiding the 
course of the ve'hicle. That was something new, but nothing 
rare for Belgium, as after this first one, numbers of others 
similarly geared and propelled picked their way through the 
street, the dog always faithfully bending to the burden, the 
man in the shafts heroically directing the trend of the caravan. 
It was when we spied a woman thus spliced up with a dog that 
our curiosity reached its high water mark. A closer investiga- 
tion of her case showed that she was attached to the cart by 
ropes with which she gave welcome assistance to her mate un- 
derneath. And the woman did not throw off on the dog; in 
fact, as we watched the movements of this strange transporta- 
tion outfit, we took notice that the dog would loiter in his har- 
ness till the traces were slack, and the single tree swagged, but 
now and then a word from the woman in front brought the shep- 
herd to a division of the tugging burden. 

At six o'clock M-e were again on wheels. Altogether, that 
Saturdav was the most strenuous day we passed during the 



276 Six and One Abroad 



entire journey. More ground was covered, more rapid, double- 
quick marches were made. From the time when we awoke be- 
fore day in Holland and hastily dressing shot through the city, 
until we closed our eyes in sleep in a bed in Paris, we traversed 
three European countries, completely bisecting a couple and 
badly puncturing the third. The first person we saw at the 
beginning of the day was a tight man, and the last one we saw 
before entering our sleeping quarters was a loose woman. The 
winds of Holland were half fog, half iceberg ; those of Paris 
were all zephyrs. From Himalaya noses to pugs and undula- 
tions, from canals to pikes, from business to gayety, from quiet 
to bedlam, from minimum to maximum, such was the transition 
from Holland to France. Halley's comet has perhaps a greater 
speed than we developed on that eventful Saturday, but we are 
unwilling to concede to any other object that runs or flies su- 
periority over us as continent sprinters. 

Again it became necessary to cress a frontier. No sooner 
had our tired bodies come in contact with the seats of the rail- 
way carriage than sleep, that gentle soother of all worries and 
weariness, gathered us in a group upon her soft bosom and rocked 
us into blissful unconsciou?ness, and the reeling emerald hills 
and intermittent towns and what-not of scene and incident 
knocked at the closed doors of observation to no avail. But 
neither ruse such as we affected at the Belgian border nor con- 
cealment in Morpiheus' bosom this time at the French frontier 
could thwart the inexorable tariff detective. Along somewhere 
about the middle of the forenight we were awakened sharply by 
the noisy presence of a gentleman who stood over the prostrate 
bunch and announced something, we knew not what, and hur- 
riedly departed, throwing open the door as he exited. AVe were 
wanted outside, that was plain. Experience heretofore and 
the circumstances of our awakening then and the rush of pas- 
sengers into a lighted station convinced us that we were to be 
searched for valuables. Gathering grips and kodaks we moped 
into the station with the crowd. There in one room displayed 
in rows upon counters were grips and satchels and assorted 
things, and around them stood a host of men, while three of- 
ficials were rummaging among the baggage and chalking the re- 
sult on the outside. In an adjoining room the ladies of the 



Moving Pictures 277 

train were undergoing similar but more severe espionage, for 
women are more apt than men to smuggle laces and silks and 
they can come nearer doing it eft'ectively by wearing them as 
part of their lingerie— therefore lady detectives were searching 
the ladies, screened meanw'hile from masculine view. 

"Cigyahs, matches, liqueers," lisped one of the detectives in 
English upon reaching our group, divining by an instinct I 
would never understand that we were Americans. In chorus 
we shook our heads and answered "none." To make sure, 
however, he ransacked the grips. One of the majority happened 
to have a cigar in his mouth at the time, a matter that caused 
the detective to make a search of the smoker's pockets. He 
found a half-used box of lucifers and a single cigar, but that 
was not in sufficient quantity to call for a duty, and we were 
passed, though we were not allowed to leave the room until the 
last passenger had been thoroughly censored. 

The train was due at Paris at midnight, and once again in 
motion we resolved to remain awake and watch for the approach 
of the great French city. All but two of the many countries 
included in the itinerary of the entire trip abroad had been 
traversed and studied as best we could in the limited time. All 
but one were now only a m^emory. That morning we had 
touched the northernmost point of the journey; all day long 
we had been flying southward and — glorious thoug'ht — home- 
ward. In tune with this feeling we lapsed naturally into song. 
Somehow, when one has been long and far away from home, 
and the return journey begins, and a picture of the home nest 
and its occupants looms predominating in the fancy, the joy 
of the contemplation finds natural expression in song. And 
so, we sang of Home, Sweet Home, and that French car was 
thoroughly Americanized with patriotic songs of the land be- 
yond the sea that has no parallel in all the latitudes and longi- 
tudes of God Almighty's purposes with men. 

The lights of Paris came ultimately in sight, a glittering 
panorama of electricity, the stars in the unclouded skies with- 
drawing their effulgence in deference to this greater display of 
the genius of man. Then the slow entry through a multitude 
of switch lights, and the disembarkation underneath a wide- 
spreading dome, in the Gare du Nord, Paris. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

Siualloiued by Paris at Midnight. 

Our little company held a council of consultation on the steps 
of the station. The hour was late for us; we were very, very 
tired from the long and strenuous day's journey and almost 
fell asleep in our tracks. But we were in the middle of a 
vexatious situation resultant from our efforts to cover half of 
Europe in a single day; Paris had swallowed us at midnight; 
could we find in her capacious maw a place to sleep. A Joshua 
and a Caleb were chosen to spy out the land and report quickly. 
While these two reconnoitered the sleeping houses, a white elec- 
tric light beat upon our faces from its suspension in the street, 
and hither and yonder other lights glowed like sentinels on 
duty with glistening swords. Far away in three directions the 
channels of travel ran in orderly perspective. On the corner 
here was a pleasure resort, its glistening counters and tables 
and chairs, its crj'-stal decanters and expansive mirrors, its at- 
tendants in white aprons, all announcing its nature. Inside 
men and women were convivial and noisy, their faces flushed 
with the stimulus of half emptied glasses. On the walks a 
larger numiber of tables and chairs offered more desirable ac- 
commodations to a larger number of guests ; always a man and 
a woman at a table; a man for each woman and a woman for 
each man. 

Knocking around a little, our unsophisticated guileless aspect 
attracted a stranger A^'fho approached and addressed us confi- 
dentially and in a very low tone ; he may have been a mis- 
sionary or a minister seeking the congeniality of our company, 
though if physiognomy counted for anything in human nature 
we could hardly have classified him under either head; it was 
perhaps very well that his message was communicated in an 
unintelligible tongue, and that he understood our horizontal 
head shake as a negative to whatever he wanted. Presently a 
woman accosted us ; she, too, may have been a messenger of the 
Salvation Army or of a home for the homeless, but her highly 
tinted features and the hour and cirumstances argued against 
the presumption. Her entreaties, w<liatever they may have been, 
were turned doAvn with a negative nod and a "no spragen se 
French." 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

The Cream of Parisians. 

Paris sleeps late ; it has to if it gets any sleep at all. It 
was nine o'clock when we paid our lodging bill Sunday morn- 
ing, and went in search of a breakfast and a "pension." We 
intended to connect with the first restaurant we came to and 
expected the connection to occur within a block or two at least. 
But Paris was asleep ; all of it was asleep, restaurant keepers, 
police, and all, every living being was asleep, and we had the 
city in our lone possession. If Germany shall ever have oc- 
casion to attempt to capture Paris, all that is necessary will be 
to slip in between 3 a. m. and 10 and the surprise will be com- 
plete. As we tramped, not a bus was running, not a car. The 
buildings lay in silent close-snuggled lines and the streets 
crossed each other regularly, wath not a single human dec- 
oration nor a vehicle on their v/hite surface. 

Paris was sound asleep. 

Of course we wondered if Parisians ever had breakfast and 
where we were to get ours. It is a fact that it was only after 
walking for as much as an hour without seeing but one living 
person or locating a solitary eating house that we succeeded at 
last in finding a mere suggestion of what we were looking for. 
It was an opening in the endless line of business houses wherein 
a coffee urn was steaming. 

"Cafe?" 

This word means coffee in French, German, Italian and Dutch, 
and it was that word we directed in the form of a question to 
a fat, jolly little woman who presided over the urn and attach- 
ments in the little cuddy-hole in the wall. A nod and the filling 
of half a dozen cups with coffee from the urn indicated that 
our first attempt to "polly voo Francay" was a success. Then 
it was the lady's time to "polly voo" and she handed us the 
word — "oley?" AVe understood the interrogative inflection, 
but not a letter or sound of the "oley." Probably she was in- 
quiring if we wanted a percheron steak, and we shook a nega- 



280 Six and One Abroad 



tive response, but rejoined with a request in plain English that 
the smallest child in an up-to-date country would have under- 
stood — a request for some sugar to stir into the coffee, which 
was desperately and fearfully black. For some unaccountable 
reason the woman failed to comprehend, but smiling broadly 
she repeated that first word of hers with emphasis : ' ' oley ? ' ' 

It was less than two hours until dinner time; we did not 
desire a breakfast of beefsteak, table d'hote or "oley," but we 
did want some sugar and wouldn't object to a scrambled egg 
or two. So in sur-rejoinder we smiled and requested that she 
cook us some eggs. 

Quoth the maiden, "oley?" 

In pantomime we represented the egg as ah oval concern, 
broke it and poured the contents of the shell on a table. Only 
a smile from the woman — a smile and a nod in the objective 
case. Dr. Stophlet thereupon, in our extremity, crowed like a 
rooster, to convey the idea that it was eggs, and eggs only, we 
wanted. But that was the wrong idea and the audience roared. 
Dr. Luccock then attempted to imitate the cackle of a hen, but 
tjhe woman perhaps never heard a hen's announcement of her 
accomplishment on the nest, and if she had, she would never 
have recognized the imitation of it by the Chicago divine. 
(Laughter and long continued applause.) 

Anyway we had succeeded in getting our coffee, and we set- 
tled down mirthfully to sip it. It was very, very strong and 
bitter, and we showed it in our grimaces. Again the lady broke 
in with her sole stock and store, that one word which she car- 
ried in her vocabulary, "oley?" What under heaven could 
oley be? Should we order it? Perhaps it was percheron or 
ordinary horse meat. We had heard that the French ate this 
as a substitute for beef, and we held a council of war and de- 
termined to finally and forever put an end to her attempt to 
thrust it upon us, appointing Dr. Luccock as spokesman to con- 
vey the information the best he could and if possible without 
wounding her feelings. He performed his duty delicately and 
effectively by shaking his head firmly and uttering very slowly 
and very emphatically: "No oley, if you please, madame." 

Unconscious that our seance was witnessed by another, we 



The Cream of Parisians 281 

fell to sipping: the coffee with accompanying grimaces, Avhen 
suddenl}^ a laugh betrayed the presence of someone behind ns 
at the door. A gentleman walked in and in the glorious tones 
of the finest language under heaven and among men, he spake 
thus: "Gentlemen, I perceive you are in trouble; perhaps I 
may be able to assist you." 

"Welcome, sir, welcome indeed; oh, do please tell that lady, 
if you can speak French, that we positively do not want any 
of her ' ' oley, ' ' and tell her to give us some sugar for our coffee 
and something with which to dilute it 600 per cent, and bring 
us a little bread, a knife and fork each, some bread and butter, 
and scrambled eggs, and we will be yours truly f orevermore. " 

"Why, gentlemen," quoth our visitor, "she was only asking 
you if you wanted some cream in your coffee." 

It was a suggestion of the connoisseur that we avoid further 
table troubles by securing accommodations for a week at one 
of the two leading hotels of Paris, which two leading hotels, 
with English-speaking waiters, he assured us were none other 
than the world-famous Hotel des Invalides and the slightly less 
renowned Hotel de Ville. 

Now, to be perfectly candid with the reader, we did not take 
quarters with either the Hotel des Invalides nor the Hotel de 
Ville, but before I will reveal the reason we did not, I will 
close this volume of travels and attach right here a peremptory 

FINALE. 



